There has been a lot of recent news in the oil market as companies look for initiatives to reshape their business model to become energy companies and not just oil and gas companies. The most notable of these is BP with its ambition of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.  Just in the last two weeks, they announced the…

I remain intently focused on the deepwater rig market, as even small changes in the already low deepwater rig count can have significant impacts on the OSV market. I am cautiously optimistic that we will likely not see the rig count drop below 13. Rigs have increased to 16 since last month, but forecasted analysis…

Since June, the deepwater OSV market in the US GOM has continued to soften. The count has fallen by another two rigs leaving the current, active deepwater rig count at 13. The number of deepwater OSVs that have been idled also increased by 7 during Q2. Given the outcome of Q2 and with seven deepwater vessels being stacked,…

Since mid-March, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and Saudi Arabia initiated an oil price war, the industry has been anticipating a precipitous short-term decline in deepwater activities. Though WTI has crept up into the high $30 range, even eclipsing $40 briefly, we are now seeing the effects of the plunge in oil prices on deepwater…

The recent collapse of oil to below zero was not driven by fundamentals in the supply and demand of oil. Rather, it was a function of oil traders and speculators having to sell their way out of a badly timed trade. The speculators that own oil delivery contracts have no intent of taking delivery of…