Halliburton: Global Oil Scarcity Is On The Horizon

The lack of investments into the oil industry is steering the world toward scarcity, one of the world’s largest oilfield service providers warned on Monday.

A global oil scarcity is on the horizon, the U.S. oilfield service provider said, after seven years of underinvestment after oil prices slide from their $100 heyday in 2014, Bloomberg reported.

“For the first time in a long time, we’ll see a buyer looking for a barrel of oil as opposed to a barrel of oil looking for a buyer,” Haliburton’s CEO Jeff Miller cautioned.

 Miller added that the Houston-based service provider has seen crude explorers cut their spending by roughly half compared with historical norms, and the hired hands from the oil patch have been impacted by rising costs. Meanwhile, oil producers have taken this opportunity to return oilfield profits to their shareholders instead of reinvesting into drilling.

It is this latter issue that will inevitably cause oil a tight market in the future, according to Miller.

But it’s more than just investment that could create an oil scarcity.

Only a week ago, oil firms were said to be facing a workforce crunch as the renewables industry is looking rather fetching. According to a survey conducted by Oilandgasjobsearch.com, more than half of all oil workers are looking to make a move to renewables. About 43% of all oil and gas workers have a desire to leave the industry altogether within the next five years.

Halliburton last week was named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America—which includes the top 10% most sustainable companies in each industry based on ESG criteria. Using this criteria, Halliburton—present in over 70 countries--ranked in the 90^th percentile among its peers.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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