Fracked Finances: Investors May Be Noticing Record Gas Production, A Decade Of Losses, Rising Rates
The fracked gas industry's long borrowing binge may finally be hitting a hard reality: paying back investors.
Enabled by rising debt, shale companies have been achieving record fracked oil and gas production, while promising investors a big future payoff. But over a decade into the “fracking miracle,” investors are showing signs they're worried that payoff will never come — and as a result, loans are drying up.
Growth is apparently no longer the answer for the U.S. natural gas industry, as Matthew Portillo, director of exploration and production research at the investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., recently told The Wall Street Journal. “Growth is a disease that has plagued the space,” Portillo said. “And it needs to be cured before the [natural gas] sector can garner long-term investor interest.”
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CNN Business recently reported that oil and gas companies stopped borrowing money in October 2018, but not out of restraint. Instead, CNN wrote, “investors, fearful of defaults, demanded a hefty premium to lend to energy companies.”
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/07/north-america-natural-gas-fracking-financial-crisis-investors
