has made its flagship oil project in Norway’s North Sea profitable at less than $25 a barrel after slashing costs and lifting production forecasts.
The move will be closely watched by the energy industry which is trying to adapt to lower prices.
The Johan Sverdrup discovery, Norway’s biggest in 30 years, has benefited from the slump in oil prices as government-controlled has been able to squeeze costs from suppliers.
, Statoil’s chief executive, told an industry conference in Stavanger that it had for the initial phase of Johan Sverdrup by a fifth to NKr99bn ($12bn). It has also raised its estimate for output in the first phase from 315,000-380,000 barrels a day to 440,000 with production due to start at the end of 2019.
“Now the break-even price is under $25 a barrel — oh, God, that is an impressive achievement,” Mr Saetre said, referring to the costs in the first phase.
With the oil price still far short of the more than $100 a barrel it was trading at just over two years ago, energy companies are having to adjust to an era of weaker prices.
Johan Sverdrup, which is estimated to contain up to 3bn barrels of oil equivalents, is seen as crucial to both Norway and Statoil coming out of the current slump in oil investments after prices more than halved in recent years. At its peak, Johan Sverdrup should account for a quarter of all Norwegian oil and gas production and is estimated to last 50 years, producing NKr1.35tn in revenue.
Many oil companies, including Statoil, are hoping that the will prove to be the next big frontier for petroleum, but even with oil prices at about $50 per barrel, as currently, the region is widely seen as unprofitable.
But Johan Sverdrup is a different matter, with Statoil also reducing its cost estimate for the full-field development. This is now expected to be NKr140bn-NKr170bn, down from the NKr170bn-NKr220bn seen last year, giving a full-field break-even level of under $30 per barrel. Full-field production is expected to start in 2022 and involve 550,000-650,000 barrels per day.
Statoil is not the only company to benefit from Johan Sverdrup, even though, as the operator with a 40 per cent stake, it has the biggest share. Lundin Petroleum, the behind the Johan Sverdrup discovery, is the second-biggest partner with a 22.6 per cent stake.
“It has been my long-held view that this world-class project will continue to show improvements from a resource, cost and value perspective as time progresses,” said Alex Schneiter, chief executive of Lundin.
“We are now seeing the results of good co-operation between Statoil, its partners and suppliers. We are strongly reducing investment costs, and we are increasing the process capacity, resource estimate and value of the field. Johan Sverdrup is a world-class project, and we want to create high value for the owners and society for generations,” said Mr Saetre.
Shares in Statoil were flat on Monday, while those in Lundin rose 2 per cent. Petoro, the Norwegian state-owned group, Det norskeoljeselskap, and Maersk Oil are the other partners in Johan Sverdrup.
India is among buyers seeking more cargoes of the cleaner fuel as spot prices have fallen about 60% since October 2014 amid a supply glut.
L&T has faced challenges in West Asia, incurring huge losses on hydrocarbon projects while the fall in oil prices has led to drying of the order pipeline.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.” It could be the motto of .
Ever since the shale boom started, there have been critics arguing that it was all too good to be true. Sceptical analysts warned that the industry would collapse like a house of cards if oil and gas prices fell.
This summer has brought the strongest evidence yet that they were wrong. Since prices began to fall two years ago, some shale producers have wilted, and dozens have folded. Many others, however, have been . The second-quarter earnings statements from US exploration and production companies earlier this month showed some remarkable cost reduction numbers — not aspirations, but achieved results. said it had reduced its production cost per barrel by 26 per cent since last year. said costs were down 40 per cent from their peak.
Some of the fall came from lower prices in the supply chain. Pioneer’s contracts for steel tubes and cement ran out last year, and its new contracts cost 30-35 per cent less.
Other cost reductions arose from internal innovations in well design, drilling and completions. , for example, is saving money by running drilling and cementing operations on multiple wells at the same site simultaneously. said it had cut the time needed to drill a well in the “Stack” shale oil area of Oklahoma by 44 per cent since last year.
The cost cuts achieved by driving down suppliers’s rates could be reversed in a recovery, as staff, rigs and pumps for hydraulic fracturing are put back to work. Dave Lesar, chief executive of , the oilfield services group, argued last month that its businesses serving US shale producers “will likely be the first and deepest beneficiary of growing supply shortages”.
But savings achieved through efficiency gains will be permanent. Vicki Hollub, chief executive of , told analysts that about 80 per cent of its savings in the Permian Basin of west Texas came from improved well design and drilling techniques, lower materials costs and enhanced logistics.
The savings mean that US shale reserves, which a few years ago were in the upper-middle section of the global cost curve, now include some of the world’s lowest-cost sources of new oil, according to Wood Mackenzie, the research company.
Meanwhile, the view that is fading, as companies cut spending to live within their means. In the second quarter, 58 leading E&P companies covered by Bloomberg reported total capital spending that was just $2.7bn greater than their operating cash flow, compared to a $9.7bn deficit in the equivalent period of 2015.
Falling costs have made it possible for activity to rise even as spending has shrunk. As Mr Lesar puts it, the industry is “getting back to business”.
Last week there were 316 rigs drilling the horizontal wells used for shale oil, up 68 from the low point in May, according to Baker Hughes, the oilfield services group.
This increase has come even though US crude has though that time, and at one point was below $40.
In 2015, the recovery in rig use had a false start. It got going when US crude was about $60 per barrel and evaporated as oil slipped lower in the second half of that year. The cost cutting done since then means that this year’s upturn is more likely to be sustained.
The pressure on costs and capital spending remains intense. US crude production dropped by 800,000 barrels per day between April 2015 and May 2016, and is still in decline. Companies including Marathon and Continental have indicated that US crude needs to recover to about $60 before they would be happy to make the investments they need to increase production. Pioneer and EOG, which are projecting robust growth at prices around $50, are unusual.
However, the fall in US oil output is now gentler than seemed likely in the spring. Some companies, including ConocoPhillips, Continental and Pioneer, have even raised their guidance for expected production.
The shale oil industry, born at the end of the last decade, has still not yet been through a complete cycle of rise, fall and recovery. With no precedents, there was inevitably uncertainty about how it would respond, and that has not been dispelled completely. But the industry has now faced its first real test. So far, it is passing.
It is hard to miss the effects of the oil price crash in Baku. Azerbaijan’s glitzy capital has the feel of a town whose boom has been abruptly brought to a halt. “To rent” signs dot the city’s shopping streets in Russian, Azeri and English.
is one of the countries to be hardest hit by — the International Monetary Fund anticipates its economy will contract by 3 per cent this year, its weakest performance in more than two decades. But the crash has done more than force shops to close. It has also shocked Baku into attempting major reforms of its corrupt and oil-dependent economy.
And it has given western governments and international financial institutions, which for years have been wringing their hands over deteriorating human rights under the regime of , the leverage to push for changes. As Baku seeks billions of dollars in funding, it has softened its hostility towards the west and .
“The steep currency devaluations over the past year have shaken Azerbaijan’s political foundations and forced the country to rapidly revisit its economic and foreign policies,” says Livia Paggi, a specialist on the region at GPW, a risk consultancy. “Now that the government is in need of international financing it is more willing to pay lip service to western concerns over its poor human rights record.”
If Azerbaijan’s economic reforms have a face, it is that of Natig Amirov. A softly spoken bureaucrat who was previously deputy tax minister, he was appointed to the newly created position of presidential adviser for economic reforms in January this year.
Only a month earlier, the central bank had slashed the manat’s value by almost a third — its second devaluation in less than a year — triggering a wave of protests in provincial towns.
The government was visibly panicked. It announced capital controls in the form of an export tax on foreign currency, only to reverse the decision a few weeks later. Despite holding more than $30bn of savings in its sovereign wealth fund, it briefly explored the possibility of .
Mr Amirov dismisses the protests as being “local and small”. But he acknowledges that the government was wrongfooted by the tumble in oil prices.
“After the second devaluation we had near panic in the financial markets, so we needed to take some urgent measures,” he says in an interview at his office in Baku’s imposing, Soviet-era presidential palace.
“We were expecting to enter the post-oil era in about 10-15 years, but we have practically found ourselves in that situation already today,” he says. “We have had to speed up a bit on the reforms, which we have been putting in place in the last few years.”
Mr Amirov hired McKinsey, the consultancy, to develop a road map for the economy to 2025 and beyond, which is due to be presented in October. But the government has not waited for the report to tackle some of its most glaring problems. Investors have long complained about corruption, as the majority of the country’s oil wealth accrued to a few well-connected families.
The most dramatic change since January has been to the customs system — long a focal point for corruption.
Until this year, according to businesspeople, financiers and politicians, if a company wanted to import 10 widgets, only three of them would be imported legally with import duties paid. The other seven were imported unofficially in exchange for an under-the-table payment, starting a chain of unofficial transactions that helped to create a vast grey market economy.
But early this year, the practice of paying bribes to import goods came to an abrupt halt, say businesspeople and bankers. “The reform in the customs system has been quite radical,” says one Baku-based banker. Now, almost all goods are imported legally, something which has led to some complaints, since the official customs duties are higher than the bribes they used to pay.
“More — but legal!” exclaims Mr Amirov with satisfaction. “Our president really took this issue under his control and every week, every day, we reported to him about how it is going.”
Revenues from customs have increased 30 per cent in the first six months of 2016 from a year earlier, in spite of the contraction in the economy.
The government has also drastically reduced the number of inspections of companies by government agencies — another common means of soliciting bribes — and is working on a reform of the tax system, Mr Amirov says.
Almost as remarkable as the moves to reshape the economy is the shift in Baku’s approach to the west. Over the past three years, relations with the US and Europe had become strained as Washington and Brussels criticised a crackdown on journalists, activists and non-governmental organisations.
Azerbaijan responded by accusing the west of meddling in its affairs. Ramiz Mehdiyev, Mr Aliyev’s long-serving chief of staff, claimed that the US and its allies were trying to “create chaos and lawlessness in our country”. Yet this year, Baku has toned down its hostile rhetoric. In March, Mr Aliyev visited Washington, saying after a meeting with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that US-Azerbaijan relations “always were very close, cordial, and now they are relations of strategic importance”.
Azerbaijan has since March released 17 journalists and activists who were in jail on politically motivated charges, according to Giorgi Gogia, a specialist on the region at Human Rights Watch. Among them is , the crusading investigative journalist who was the highest-profile political prisoner in the country.
Analysts point to pressure from a bill in US Congress that would have imposed sanctions on Azerbaijan’s elite over the country’s human rights record, as well as the desire to blunt criticism before Baku’s first Formula 1 race this June.
But a key role has undoubtedly been played by Baku’s need to borrow billions of dollars — largely from western institutions. For despite the change in its economic fortunes, Baku has pressed on with its most significant project: the $46bn Southern Gas Corridor that would ship natural gas from for the first time.
The project is doubly significant for Baku. It will help to ensure export revenues in the medium to long term, when oil production is projected to fall. It will also create a physical connection to Europe, welding Baku’s fortunes to the continent and providing insurance against Russian policies in the region.
Azerbaijan’s share of the costs of the project will total some $13bn, according to Samir Sharifov, the finance minister. Of that, $8bn is yet to be spent, and Baku hopes to raise $5bn in loans and guarantees from institutions such as the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Asian Development Bank, he says.
The discussions over the loans have given foreign lenders political leverage. And an outsized role has been handed to an Oslo-based transparency initiative as an instrument for political reform.
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative was started in 2002 and induced by Tony Blair, the former UK prime minister, as a voluntary body that would bring together governments, companies and non-governmental organisations to improve transparency of commodities payments.
In 2014, as Azerbaijan intensified its crackdown on civil society and journalists, the bank accounts of many of the NGOs involved in verifying data on resources industry payments were frozen. In response, the EITI reprimanded Azerbaijan by as an EITI-compliant country. Now, the EITI status has taken on a critical role in Baku’s talks with financial institutions.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti, the EBRD’s president, raised the EITI status with Mr Aliyev during a visit to Azerbaijan in May, according to several people who were present. “The EITI is a bellwether mark that we look at very closely,” says Riccardo Puliti, managing director of energy at the EBRD. “Our message to Azerbaijan is very clear: we do expect material and significant progress.”
The World Bank has been less public in its lobbying, but is also pushing for Baku to comply with the EITI. As part of $500m in proposed loans to the Southern Gas Corridor project, it is proposing that $5m be directed towards improving Azerbaijan’s EITI compliance, according to people familiar with the matter. The World Bank declined to comment on the details of its discussions.
The move has irked the government. “My personal opinion is that IFIs should do what they are designed to do. For this kind of issue — human rights, other things — there are plenty of other institutions,” Mr Sharifov says.
Nonetheless, he says that the government is doing everything it could to regain its EITI status. Sofaz, the state oil fund which represents Baku at the EITI, “received an instruction from President Aliyev to make necessary steps to sort out whatever issues we might have”.
Regardless of concerns over human rights, there is an enormous political will behind the project, say people involved in the discussions. The project was the result of years of efforts to diversify Europe’s gas supplies away from Russia, and major shareholders include and the Turkish state.
Nonetheless, the pressure has already yielded some results. Gubad Ibadoglu, an economist who has represented Azerbaijan’s NGOs on the EITI board, says his organisation’s bank accounts, which were blocked in 2014, were unfrozen on March 30 — along with those of other NGOs that participate in EITI in Azerbaijan. Activists, who in the past two years had often been blocked from travelling internationally, are once again able to leave the country.
Azerbaijan’s EITI status is set to be considered at a board meeting in late October, according to Dyveke Rogan, the group’s regional director. Shahmar Movsumov, chief executive of Sofaz, says: “It will be very unfortunate if the decision will be to suspend Azerbaijan.”
Mr Ibadoglu says: “The government has made some progress but it is not enough,” adding that many NGOs are struggling financially amid pressure from the tax ministry and regulations that make it very difficult to receive grants from abroad. “Foreign funding is almost impossible in Azerbaijan.”
Many observers inside Azerbaijan and abroad remain sceptical that Mr Aliyev can push through real reforms to a system that he has helped to shape over 13 years as president.
The economic reforms have not yet had much real impact on ordinary Azerbaijanis. In the past week, the country has been gripped by fears of a fresh devaluation after banks restricted sales of foreign currency. An official in Baku says demand for dollars in the banking sector is five to six times higher than supply through regular sales from the sovereign wealth fund.
And while rights advocates cautiously welcomed the release of political prisoners this year, the past few weeks have seen a wave of arrests of activists and opposition figures. Ms Ismayilova, the journalist, says: “They released us but dozens of others are getting arrested.”
“The jury is still out on whether the government is able to implement its reforms,” says Ms Paggi at GPW. “Much of it will depend on the price of oil.”
Eighteen months behind bars have not blunted the journalistic instincts of Azerbaijan’s leading investigative reporter. “There are amazing stories there,” says Khadija Ismayilova of her time in prison, before launching into a tale about drug smugglers and corruption in the police force.
She has barely paused for breath before resuming her chronicling of the accumulation of wealth by the family of President Ilham Aliyev and other figures among Azerbaijan’s elite. It was less than two weeks after her release in May that she published her latest investigation — into how some banks had made profitable trades ahead of the recent devaluation of the currency.
Speaking through a cloud of cigarette smoke in a downtown Baku café, she is defiant about her time in prison. “When you are in trouble, you can think about trouble, or think about how strong you are to endure it,” she says.
Ms Ismayilova, who was arrested in December 2014 and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison last September, became a cause célèbre for campaigners against the Azerbaijani government’s imprisonment of its critics. She was one of 20 female political prisoners that the US highlighted in a campaign last year. “A lot of attention is put on me,” she says. “Others are forgotten. I would love to have a lot of attention on other cases.”
She is not universally loved in Azerbaijan, where the government has presented her as a traitor in the pay of foreign powers. Nonetheless, several passers-by come over to say a few words of encouragement.
She says “people do respect the courage” she has shown. And she is in no mood to tone down her criticism — she is working on a clutch of investigations and has several cases against the Azerbaijani government at the European Court of Human Rights. “If they want to kill me, they can kill me in the street,” she says.
Oil closed in on its first weekly fall since July, dropping below $50 a barrel, following mixed signals from Opec countries about possible action at next month’s producer meeting.
said this week he would attend the meeting of Opec ministers at an industry conference in , building hopes of co-operation given he had declined to attend the last co-ordinated attempt to agree a production freeze in April.
But Bijan Zanganeh again emphasised Iran’s production cannot be restricted as it raises output and tries to recover customers after struggling under western sanctions in previous years.
Khalid al Falih, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, who has voiced cautious support for the meeting, said on Thursday he did not believe “significant intervention” in oil markets was needed at this time, damping expectations of a deal now.
“The market is moving in the right direction. Demand is picking up nicely around the world,” he said to Reuters.
The oil price has risen since Saudi Arabia indicated this month it might be willing to co-operate with Opec and key non-Opec nations.
In April, talks over a production freeze between Opec and countries outside the cartel such as Russia ended in failure after Saudi Arabia refused to take part in any agreement without Iran.
The weakness in the oil price since July has renewed attempts by economically weaker members of Opec, such as Venezuela, to push again for co-ordinated action to prop up the price.
Opec earned $404bn in net oil export revenue in 2015, which is almost half of its earnings in 2014, according to new data from the US energy department.
“We should not get up our hopes too much this time around, either,” said Carsten Fritsch at Commerzbank.
Other analysts have said even if a production freeze is reached, producer countries would be halting their output at already elevated levels. Saudi Arabia, for example, has increased crude oil production to 10.67m barrels a day in July, the most on record. Mr Falih said August production would continue at that level.
Meanwhile, other producers such as Nigeria, Iraq and Libya, where production has been disrupted in recent months, have all shown signs of increasing output of late.
After three consecutive weekly advances, the global benchmark Brent crude fell $1.12 to $49.76 a barrel. US marker West Texas Intermediate declined 94 cents to $47.56 a barrel. In Friday afternoon trading, both benchmarks edged higher.
The US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen told the annual global central bankers’ gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming the argument against a backdrop of moderate growth in the US economy.
Traders were also responding to reports by Iran’s Press TV, citing Yemen’s Al-Masirah TV, that Yemeni missiles had hit facilities owned by Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. Prices retreated after Saudi Aramco said oil facilities were safe. A state broadcaster said an electricity plant in Najran, far from any oil facilities, had been set on fire by a “projectile” from Yemen.
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