Barclays: Global E&P Spending Drop Revised to 27% for 2016

lweb.es/f895 4.26.16

iconOEF REVIEW:Barclays has revised downwards its global exploration and production spending outlook for 2016, now saying such spending could fall 27% this year, down from 15% back in January. Spending in North America is now trending down 40% versus 27% in January, and international spending is down 21% year-over-year. Since the Barclays Upstream Spending Survey published in January, operators representing 71% of total spending have revised budgets to reflect reduced 2016 spending plans amid a sustained lower oil-price outlook.

Russia may be preparing a privatization fire sale

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iconOEF REVIEW:With a rainy day “reserve fund” of only 4.5 percent of GDP and scant access to international financial markets, Russia urgently needs a fiscal Plan B. In January, the authorities announced additional cuts amounting to about 1 percent of GDP. More important, the government will try to raise another 1.5 percent of GDP — 1 trillion rubles ($13 billion) — by privatizing state-owned firms, including “crown jewels” such as Rosneft (Russia’s largest oil company), the diamond monopoly Alrosa and the flagship airline Aeroflot.

Nigeria’s State Oil Firm to Be Split into 30 Companies – NNPC Head

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iconOEF REVIEW:“For the first time, we are unbundling the subset of the NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) to 30 independent companies with their own managing directors,” Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, also minister of state for petroleum who was appointed head of NNPC last year to overhaul the company, told a conference in Abuja.Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has made reforming the nation’s oil sector a priority as a slump in oil prices has hammered the economy, since crude exports account for around 95 percent of foreign earnings.