Today's Pickup: Oil And Gas Drillers Pushed To The Wall As Banks Cut Price Forecasts For 2020

Good day,

Several major banks, including Wells Fargo & Co WFC and JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM, have reduced their expectations on the value of oil and gas reserves of companies. This is an important development and a dashing of hopes for smaller oil and gas drillers, who depend on bank estimates to raise funding for their operations. 

Natural gas price forecasts have tumbled by 20% for the next year, which would cause a 15-30% reduction in the loans offered to drillers by banks. The forecast predicts a $2 to $2.35 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) for natural gas and oil prices to fall by $1to $2 a barrel over the next 12 months. 

Did you know?

China and India are the two largest markets for two-wheelers, which contribute to their air pollution problems. About 20% of the CO₂ emissions and 30% of particulate emissions in India are due to two-wheelers.

Quotable

"With Volkswagen Autonomy, we want to establish a global technology company that combines automotive and technology expertise to combine agile and creative work in a high-performance culture with process orientation and scalability." 

– Alexander Hitzinger, Volkswagen's senior Vice President of Autonomous Driving, while talking about the company's plans to bring self-driving cars into commercial use by 2025. 

In other news

Is U.S. shale circling the drain?

‘Significant production slowdown' is all around the headlines about the U.S. shale patch these days. (Oilprice)

The first map of America's food supply chain is mind-boggling

Most of our food is moved across great distances – and through many different forms of transit – before it reaches our plates. (Fast Company)

WeChat becomes an e-commerce challenger in China with mini programs

Adding a payment function to its app allowed WeChat to move beyond a marketing and customer service tool to a retail platform, enabling the purchase of products through the app. (Forbes)

What's blockchain actually good for, anyway? For now, not much

Not long ago, blockchain technology was touted as a way to track tuna, bypass banks and preserve property records. Reality has proved a much tougher challenge. (Wired)

Slowdown has hit steel production; export-dependent nations more affected

Global GDP is to come down to 3.0% against 3.3% projected in April 2019. This slowdown in growth is contributed to by the EU, China, Japan, Brazil and India. (Financial Express)

Final Thoughts

Buoyed by the growth of the ecommerce market in the U.S. and troubled by the sliding stock market fortunes, FedEx is on the path to improving the visibility of its last-mile delivery operations by mandating its contractors to carry hand-held devices, operate on-board cameras, and scrutinize service levels of last-mile drivers to improve its standing in the market. 

The strata of ecommerce is challenging as FedEx sees a decline in profit margins even when there is an overall increase in delivery volumes. This is because ecommerce deliveries tend to be single package shipments rather than bulk deliveries that used to be the norm before. FedEx's total operating margin fell to 6.5% in fiscal year 2018, a 1% decrease year-on-year. 

Hammer down everyone!

Image by John R Perry from Pixabay