Schlumberger

In this note: most bullish on oil field service (OFS/OSX) in a decade. Sankey Research Special Event: post-OPEC dinner Vienna Sunday 4th December, Park Hyatt (location subject to confirmation). RSVP. Accepted: Kathleen Kelley, Jan Stuart, Major US hedge fund portfolio manager, invited: Helima Croft (RBC), Brian Sullivan (CNBC), Lionel Messi (invited by Instagram DM). Yep, yesterday a combination of the WSJ and Saudi official press agency got me. There is now sufficient controversy around the …

“This job is easy, all you have to do is forecast the oil price right.” In this note we argue that the most expensive group among the oils will run here, based on the recent market “Quantquake” that we outline in this note. What was the Quantquake? Last week saw an extraordinary move in markets. And from this we derive a trading recommendation into year end. There is more to short- and medium-term investing than […]

With 3Q22 oil & gas earnings effectively in the books, we took the opportunity to aggregate 2023 production and capex forecasts across the oil & gas sector.  We looked at consensus estimates for 50 of the largest energy producers in the US, Canada, and Europe and find 2023 production expectations struggle to stay flat as a projected 15% y/y capex inflation continues to undergo upside pressure. The aggregate producer group represents just over 21 mmbbl/d […]

There was a collision yesterday in Tribeca between your experience-bitten, long-since cynical energy (oil) analyst, and the Schlumberger’s analyst meeting. Big oil clients have seen oily friends fired, exit Wall Street forever, been asked to cover extra sectors, been bullish when they should have been bearish, watched great companies humbled, seen clients lost to 1,000 yard stares. Schlumberger is a huge part of the arc of oil history, not least on Wall Street. We, the […]

Tomorrow Happy Hour: Jon Rigby, IR ENI Thursday Nov 3, 2022 5:00 PM ET  Please click this link to register Rigby is the recently-appointed (April 2022) head of investor relations and strategy planning at Eni, the $50bn market cap Italian energy giant. Previously he was a well-known London-based sellside Lead Oil & Gas analyst, covering global major stocks, for UBS, as managing director. He joined UBS in 2004 from Commerzbank and holds Chartered Financial Analyst […]

Week ahead: Fed decision and plenty of earnings. Last week was a big one for markets, to say the least. Mega-cap tech bombing the tape. Worked out great for the oils and energy. A client said my chart of oils’ share of market earnings are too low: I have the group at 5% of the S&P500, but 10% of the earnings of the market, he is getting energy earnings at 15% of the market, which […]

Yo, Noted, French refining strike seems to be drawing to a close, with ExxonMobil’s Fos returning to normal. Continued issues with the most extreme of the unions, the CGT, for TotalEnergies. Around 30% of French gas stations reported short of product. We perceive the refining workers strike in Iran to be a domestic issue – for now. History of the Iranian Revolution was driven by strikes by Iranian oil workers. The 1979 Iran revolution directly […]

Your correspondent is flying tomorrow at 7am La Guardia to Houston for Steve Chazen’s Memorial at 2pm assuming flights co-operate, and so this week’s Sunday is here on a Saturday; a brief highlight reel, or should that be “bloopers” “fails”, and “cringe” in this tape. From the UK pound, to Japanese Yen, to Credit Suisse credit default swaps (CDS) this is a market at war with itself, quite literally. The incredible sabotage to the Nordstream […]

Brooklyn Cop at 844th Precinct accuses innocent Sankey of being “weird-looking” “They” got caught speeding yesterday: fast unwind of long natgas / short refining trade Terrific Happy Hour with Jay Saunders and a couple of other hitters last night; introducing Scope 4 Jennison portfolio manager (PM) Jay Saunders is very popular in the market, you can tell that by the players that dialled in to participate in his call yesterday. He co-runs the Jennison Natural […]

It was a week that started with the Queen accepting a new British Prime Minister, and ended a new King Charles III and the always-somber 9-11. It is a miserable late summer day in New York, drizzle from a windless grey sky. With due respect, there is not a lot in those events directly relevant to oil/energy, and no doubt the last thing you need is more coverage from me. Rather, there is lots of […]

Big week for what should be terrific oil earnings this week. Watching Iraq Highlight charts – market rebounding, oils catching a bid ~ Week ahead: It’s good to see that oil earnings have worked back onto generalist earnings calendars, as shown from “Earnings Whispers” below. Devon aftermarket Monday sure, BP, Marathon Petroleum and Oxy Tuesday, etc, but believe me, a year ago Berry and Callon did not make these lists (see Wednesday below). Marathon Oil […]

This note outlines the mega-themes that are emerging mid-way through oils’ reporting season. We listened to a lot of calls, read A LOT of transcripts, and distill it here, for your Saturday afternoon reading by the pool on your yacht. Last evening I reflected that this weekend I was as likely to bit hit by a massive piece of falling Chinese space debris, as to win the mega-millions and get my own yacht with pool. […]

Sometimes I get depressed. It’s not just what I have messed up, it’s the theme of recognising I lived since 1967 through an epic era of human expansion, in terms of post World War II peace, juiced by the collapse of Communism, and then the massive expansion of government spending for tomorrow. And I feel like tomorrow came.  The key question, when I came to Wall St in 2004, and everyone wanted 2% GDP growth […]

Greetings fellow earthlings, (Dow Jones WSJ 7/17/22) — Investors hoping a strong start to earnings season would jolt the stock market from its slump haven’t gotten much satisfaction. Early reports from U.S. companies have refocused attention on some of the biggest challenges facing businesses, from the threat of an economic slowdown to the pressure that rising costs are putting on corporate profits. JPMorgan Chase, Delta Air Lines and industrial supplier Fastenal are among those last […]

Back in Brooklyn, Happy July 4th weekend, insert my annual joke about my not recognising US independence, or Make America Great Britain Again. Harry and Meghan’s second kid is eligible to be a female US President, being born in California. Based on the recent candidates, not just the winning ones but the primaries, just about anybody will do better than the current political class. Enough, let’s take a quick look at the first half. As […]

Greetings from Hyde Park, We are back in London, Paris was controversial; Patricia considers it the greatest most wonderful place on earth, I get into arguments with Parisians, Selloff dynamics Hess reminder Phillips 66 Comments Morocco? Algeria It’s only rock ‘n’ and I’m 80 On the selloff: To me, the charts are not broken, but we nibbled 5% of the S&P500, then collapsed back to just over 4.1%. It is actually barely visible on the […]

Glad tidings, A long weekend in the US, a four day weekend in the UK for the Queen’s platinum jubilee, seventy years as Monarch. Quite the rein. Go easy on your temperamental French executive chef today as he crashes around in a fury having to stoop to make your requested Memorial weekend hot dogs and chicken nuggets. The fact that you intend to slug super-chilled Napa Screaming Eagle Sauvignon blanc is only upsetting him more.  […]

Few, As they say on the internet. Today we have a PORTFOLIO MANAGER SPECIAL in the presentation, which includes a full glorious ppt on the largest stocks in the market, and for bonus, a Sankey Recommendation on each stock. The oils look great on these charts. The recommendations on names like Google (BUY) or Disney (SELL) are purely quanatitive interpretation of charts, we do not cover non-energy related stocks fundamentally. So this is quantitative analysis, […]

This LNG round up with Gordon Shearer (Poten & Partners guru) from Thursday night took longer to write and I got tangled in the SLB results, which came in okay – readers will know I am not pushing service companies but love oils… “to 10% of S&P500!” Chatting to a client with Midstream expertise before Gordon Shearer, LNG expert, came on Strategy Session Thursday evening, the view was that Kinder Morgan results were decent owing […]

Greetings from Maryland, With limited computing power at my disposal, and having been in thought since watching Elon on Thursday give a TED interview, followed by self-identified philosopher Alex Epstein on our Thursday Strategy Session, a couple of days off, a stroll in Annapolis, this is note is more ideas in 1,000 words, to make a picture, than pictures worth 1,000 words. No demand destruction because there is nowhere to go to substitute Therefore self-compounding […]

Aramco’s full year 2021 results released Sunday (3/20/22) were more historic than perhaps the market appreciated. First, an announcement of a major increase in capex did not yield a major boost in oil supply, from a global perspective. Saudi capacity will rise just 1.5mb/d, exports 2.5mb/d by 2027. Second, an extraordinary statement from Saudi’s foreign ministry should give any observer of global markets pause for thought: Saudi Arabia said on Monday it would not bear […]

Big Shot, Big Short moment. Nickel suspended at $100,000 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange. That means that today a Nickel (5c coin) is worth 12.5c, given it is 5g in weight and 25% nickel. The other 75% of a Nickel is copper, by the way. It’s being reported that Chinese entrepreneur Xiang Guangda – known as “Big Shot” – had a large short position on the LME through his company, Tsingshan Holding, the […]

Mike Masters was the first American to score a goal at Wembley. But we had a different Mike Masters on Happy Hour last night, the hugely successful hedge fund manager who had a swimming scholarship to Tennessee, and started Masters Capital in 1994. He became highly prominent in 2008, testifying to Congress on oil speculation. Mike Masters: the market is obsessed with post-COVID recovery, but is not thinking enough about the decade prior to COVID […]

Presentation today, and commentary below: Thursday evening annoucement: major sellside meeting by ExxonMobil: “updates to their company plan” on Wednesday December 1st. Sellside invited. Virtual. Big deal for ExxonMobil. We had pondered how ExxonMobil would manage their annual capex announcement, due in December, vs their traditional strategy update due next March. We pondered if plans would be ready in time for a December update, given the scale of board and management change that has occurred […]

Big upcoming events for us: Happy Hour this week with former FERC Chairman Neal Chatterjee, along with Aaron Cutler, both now partners at major DC law firm Hogan Lovells. Aaron at 5pm, Neal at 5:30pm. Both have deep multi-decade Washington energy experience at the highest level – Neal was former Chief of Staff for Senator McConnell, Senate Republican Leader. It is obviously vital to understand the shifting energy landscape in Washington. These are the experts […]

Key points: Clients are focused on OPEC spare capacity and demand growth, but also, rightly, North American supply growth, which is the most price elastic component of global oil supply. Halliburton results yesterday naturally raise questions over US production growth; the company stated that it sees 20% rise next year in North American revenues, which includes “solid pricing gains”. This would imply Halliburton expects US E&P capex to be ~10% higher next year; not a […]

The US has negative unemployment, by one measure. The confirmation of that on Friday led to an interesting market reaction. The data point on negative unemployment released before the market was that there are 8.6 million people considered out of work in the US and nearly 10 million job openings. This could be a moot point in the EU where movement of labour is much more challenged by language and culture, but in the US, […]

Greetings, It is all about the presentation this week; please click on the attached file for a look at what is in store for the week ahead – earnings; OPEC chat; what to buy when US natgas prices hit $4/mmbtu, which they did this past week; factor performance disconnection; and our only solution since we wrote The Renaissance Thesis of US E&P in 2017, namely hard cash return to shareholders. These oils have to bribe […]

Happy July 4th Here’s to democracy and freedom. Usually, I make some dumb joke about being British and not celebrating any Independence on July 4th, but this weekend marks the first anniversary of Sankey Research. My first note, quoting Public Enemy as a statement on freedom of speech, was sent out the Friday of July 4th weekend 2020, and for long as it may continue, the anniversary of Sankey Research will be Independence Day weekend. […]

Trying to get up this morning, I was pondering whether the US military could split and part go renegade. However we continue to believe the US constitution will prevail. Rather a negative start to the day, but I moved on to put together the Sunday Sankey for you, with energy, be it alternative, or regular oil and gas, starting the year very well. We continue to be obsessive about the US$ impact on oil prices, […]

Special Sunday Sankey featuring the legendary oil’s share of the S&P500 vs oil’s share of the S&P500 earnings charts! Sadly, it was not worth running them all year, given the horrendous earnings of the sector in what will be the worst year in the history of oil relative to expectations. Now, as we look directly into 2021, the charts are beginning to make sense. More inside this note but a couple of starters for you, […]

This morning we shake our heads at the compensation of Noble Energy CEO Dave Stover, and consider the Halliburton vs Schlumberger pair, briefly… Continue reading