If the carnage that took place in the U.S. shale oil patch during the first quarter of 2020 is any indication of the financial health of the industry, just wait until the second-quarter results are released. Yes, there’s going to be serious BLOODSHED in the shale industry come early August.
While I knew several shale companies posted significant impairment write-offs last quarter, I had no idea of the extent of the damage. Just about every shale oil company posted an impairment write-off in their Q1 2020 results. And, when we add up the total for the leading twelve shale companies, it was a stunning $40 billion:
Marathon came in first place by writing off $7,822 million or $7.8 billion of asset impairments. Concho wasn’t too far behind in second place with $7.7 billion, but it also took a $1.9 billion impairment write-off of “Goodwill.” Thus, Concho wrote down a total of $9.7 billion impairments; however, I only included the “asset” impairments in the chart above.
These impairments destroyed the “ASSET VALUE” of many of the shale companies. For example, Concho Resources (NYSE:CXO) posted the company’s assets were worth $24.7 billion Q1 2019 versus $13.6 billion after the impairment write-off.
Interestingly, the major oil companies such as ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) did not post any impairments last quarter. However, I believe they will be doing so in the next few quarters.
Regardless… with many shale oil companies cutting production and receiving a much lower oil price during Q2 2020, it’s going not going to be pretty when their financial results are released.