Last week, amid a renewed bout of crude carnage, Morgan Stanley made a rather disconcerting call on oil.
"On current trajectory, this downturn could become worse than 1986: An additional +1.5 mb/d [of OPEC supply] is roughly one year of oil demand growth. If sustained, this could delay the rebalancing of oil markets by a year as well. The forward curve has started to price this in: as the chart shows, the forward curve currently points towards a recovery in prices that is far worse than in 1986. This means the industrial downturn could also be worse. In that case, there would be little in analysable history that could be a guide to this cycle," the bank wrote, presaging even tougher times ahead for the O&G space.
If Morgan Stanley is correct, we’re likely to see tremendous pressure on the sector’s highly indebted names, many of whom have been kept afloat thus far by easy access to capital markets courtesy of ZIRP.
With a rate hike cycle on the horizon, with hedges set to roll off, and with investors less willing to throw good money after bad on secondaries and new HY issuance, banks are likely to rein in credit lines in October when the next assessment is due. At that point, it will be game over in the absence of a sharp recovery in crude prices.
Against this challenging backdrop, we bring you the following commentary from Emanuel Grillo, partner at Baker Botts's bankruptcy and restructuring practice who spoke to Bloomberg Brief last week.
No comments:
Post a Comment