Energy Analyst Who Called Out Finances Of Fracking Back In 2009 Says Tar Sands Are "Done"

[hatrack]

Deborah Lawrence used to be a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch. Over the past decade, the independent economic analyst has developed a reputation for telling oil investors what they don’t want to hear. In 2009, she started warning that the financial model for shale oil fracking companies doesn’t make any sense. Lawrence began analyzing financial data for Chesapeake Energy after the oil and gas company began drilling near her farm in Texas. She discovered that the company, and many others in the industry, were going through cash and accruing debt at alarming rates.

“I think we have a big problem,” she told a colleague at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, where she was then an advisory committee member. But finding a larger audience proved difficult. The so-called “shale revolution” was transforming the U.S. into the world’s biggest oil producer and everyone from oil executives to state leaders to Wall Street bankers wanted a piece of it.

“I kept saying, look, ‘There’s no free cash flow and it keeps deteriorating every year I look at this,’” Lawrence recalled in an interview with The Tyee. So she contacted business outlets like the Wall Street Journal. “I sent them stuff for so long with all the underlying documentation and they were like, ‘Oh no, shales are gonna save us forever.’”

EDIT

Lawrence is now predicting that Alberta’s oilsands industry is fast dying. The main drivers are COVID-19 and the plummet in bitumen prices hastened by Saudi Arabia and Russia fighting for world oil dominance. Already the price crash could shutter close to two million barrels per day of bitumen production. Output will stay indefinitely low, expects Lawrence and many other analysts. And that will deal a fatal blow to Canada’s heavy oil industry. “Shale and tarsands, they’re done as far I can see, unless there’s some miracle out there,” Lawrence told The Tyee. “I just don’t see how they’re going to ever be able to recover,” she said. “There’s just too much oil and not enough demand anymore. And demand’s only going down, it’s not going up.”

EDIT

https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/05/11/The-Oil-Sands-Are-Done/

[Hestia]

1. They aren't done until they clean up the sites on their dime along with dismantling wells

Those burdens have been on the taxpayers and we are tapped out (pun intended)

[abqtommy]

3. Yeah, it's not really news that the tarsands have gone bust but let me know when the cleanup

gets finished. Now that'll be NEWS! Thanks, Hestia!

[central scrutinizer]

2. Post apocalyptic hellscapes

Google “tar sands Alberta” for images of the desecration. Absolutely nauseating.