Norway Energy Giant Equinor Comes to Regret Foray Into U.S. Shale Oil - Bloomberg

Norway Energy Giant Equinor Comes to Regret Foray Into U.S. Shale Oil - Bloomberg

Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor ASA said it never should have made the investments into U.S. shale fields that resulted in billions of dollars in losses and a brewing political controversy at home.

After the company announced the sale of assets in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation for $900 million -- just a fraction of the price it originally paid almost a decade ago -- Equinor Chief Executive Officer Anders Opedal said things would have been done very differently in hindsight.

“We should not have made these investments,” Opedal said in a phone interview on Wednesday after Equinor reported a surprise fourth-quarter loss. When the company did these deals “higher oil prices were expected in the future, a high consumption of oil was expected,” but that’s not how it turned out, he said.

Since Equinor’s entry, U.S. shale has undergone two big cycles of boom and bust driven by big swings in crude prices. The industry has barely begun to recover from the slump triggered last year by the coronavirus pandemic, which saw prices fall briefly below zero.