The Pandemic Has Broken Shale and Left Oil Markets in OPEC Hands - Bloomberg

The Pandemic Has Broken Shale and Left Oil Markets in OPEC Hands - Bloomberg

OPEC’s oil ministers have a few challenges to consider at a crucial summit next week, but for the first time in years the shale boom won’t be at the top of the list.

A devastating global pandemic and a reckoning with Wall Street appear to have broken the resolve of the shale wildcatters who turned the U.S. into the world’s biggest oil producer. Years of breakneck growth, at the expense of crude kingpins in the Middle East and Russia, have come to an end. If there was ever any doubt, it’s now abundantly clear who has the upper hand in the global oil market.

“In the future, certainly we believe OPEC will be the swing producer — really, totally in control of oil prices,” Bill Thomas, chief executive officer of EOG Resources Inc., the biggest independent shale producer by market value, said earlier this month. “We don’t want to put OPEC in a situation where they feel threatened, like we’re taking market share while they’re propping up oil prices.”

The shale industry’s prudence, also echoed by the CEOs of Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and Occidental Petroleum Corp., means that production will probably flatten after a steep plunge this year. U.S. oil output will end 2021 close to 11 million barrels a day, about the same as it is now, according to forecasters IHS Markit, Rystad Energy, Enverus and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.