Oil prices have deteriorated substantially in the past few weeks and have reached nominal price lows not seen in more than a decade. Moody's has adjusted its view downward for the likely range of prices. We see a substantial risk that prices may recover much more slowly over the medium term than many companies expect, as well as a risk that prices might fall further. Even under a scenario with a modest recovery from current prices, producing companies and the drillers and service companies that support them will experience rising financial stress with much lower cash flows.
RATINGS RATIONALE
Today's review for downgrade considers that much weaker industry fundamentals have potential to warrant rating changes for all companies covered in this press release. While this review focuses on companies rated in the range from A1 to B3, Moody's is also reevaluating higher and lower rated companies in the context of industry conditions. The higher rated companies on average are somewhat more resilient to low oil prices and Moody's has recently downgraded many of the lower rated companies.
As part of its ongoing assessment of energy markets, Moody's sharply reduced its oil price assumptions on January 21 in light of continuing oversupply in the global oil markets and demand growth that remains tepid. Iran is poised to add more than 500,000 barrels per day to global supply while OPEC and many non-OPEC oil producers continue to produce without restraint as they battle for market share. The addition of Iranian oil to the market this year will offset or exceed expected declines in US production of about 500,000 barrels per day. Increased production vastly exceeds growth in oil consumption, given modest growth in consumption from major consumers such as China, India and the US.
Production now exceeds demand by about 2 million barrels per day, adding to already high global oil stocks. Our natural gas and natural gas liquids price assumptions are unchanged. Natural gas production in the US continues to increase while costs decline and producers generate cash returns at ever-lower prices, although in many cases these appear insufficient to service their debt.
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Lower oil prices will further weaken cash flows for E&P companies and the upstream portion of integrated oil and gas companies. This will cause further deterioration in financial ratios, including deeper negative free cash flow. Most companies are unable to internally fund sustaining levels of capital spending at current market prices. Current industry conditions also reduce the value of assets offered for sale and have made accessing capital markets more expensive for some companies and unavailable for others. While integrated oil and gas companies benefit from the profitability of their downstream operations, the upstream operations represent a much larger part of the capital employed and cash flow for most of these companies.
Although all issuers in these sectors have been adversely affected by declining prices, severity varies substantially by issuer. Accordingly, the range of possible outcomes upon conclusion of the review for given issuers varies from possible confirmation of ratings to multi-notch downgrades. Baseline credit assessments of government related issuers (GRI) may also experience multi notch downgrades but the impact on the final ratings may be partly mitigated by expectation of extraordinary support from their respective governments. Moody's expects to conclude a majority of the reviews by the end of the first quarter.
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