银行拒绝向美国页岩钻探公司提供贷款

据今日油价网站7日23消息 在油价暴跌之后，越来越多的银行正在限制美国页岩气行业的融资渠道，尽管在大流行和沙特和俄罗斯石油价格战爆发之前，人们就已经明显不太乐意为失去美国页岩气业务而放贷更多资金。

分析师向彭博社表示，放贷机构已在今年春季削减了对规模较小的美国页岩气生产商的借款基数，而在今年第二次借款基础重新确定的秋季，钻井企业可以从其油气储备中获得的贷款额度将进一步削减。

今年春天，就在油价暴跌之后，海恩斯和布恩律师事务所对石油和天然气生产商、油田服务公司、金融机构和私人股本公司进行的一项调查显示，相当多的受访者预计，由于大宗商品价格暴跌，借贷基数至少会减少20%，45%的受访者预计降幅甚至更大，达到30%或更高。

一些公司的借贷基础大幅削减。例如，总部位于俄克拉荷马城的Chaparral能源在4月份被贷款方从3.25亿美元削减到1.75亿美元。总部位于休斯敦的绿洲石油表示，该公司的借款基数已从13亿美元降至6.25亿美元，所选承诺总额已按借款基数水平设定。

据彭博社的消息人士称，银行愿意向页岩气公司发放的贷款不仅数量在减少，而且偿还成本也越来越高。

据彭博社报道，一些银行还担心，一旦出现违约和可能的债转股，它们可能最终拥有自己没有管理经验的油气资产。

能源商业咨询公司Opportune LLP执行合伙人大卫·巴格特对向彭博社表示：“三分之一从事上游能源贷款的银行在未来几年内将不再这样做。”

王磊 摘译自 今日油价

原文如下：

Banks Shun Loans To U.S. Shale Drillers

A growing number of banks are restricting access to funding to the U.S. shale industry in the wake of the oil price crash, although the aversion to lending more capital to losing U.S. shale operations was already evident before the pandemic and the Saudi-Russian oil price war.

Lenders already cut their borrowing bases for the smaller U.S. shale producers in the spring, and more cuts to the amounts of loans drillers can take against their oil and gas reserves are coming in the fall in the second borrowing base redetermination for the year, analysts tell Bloomberg.

In the spring, just after the oil price collapse, a survey by law firm Haynes and Boone among oil and gas producers, oilfield services companies, financial institutions, and private equity firms showed that a sizable majority of respondents expected borrowing bases to decrease by at least 20 percent in response to the commodity price crash, while 45 percent of respondents expected even deeper cuts of 30 percent or more.

Some companies saw huge cuts to their borrowing bases. Oklahoma City-based Chaparral Energy, for instance, saw its borrowing base slashed by lenders from US$325 million to US$175 million in April. Houston-based Oasis Petroleum said its borrowing base was decreased from US$1.3 billion to US$625 million and aggregate elected commitments were set at the level of the borrowing base.

According to Bloomberg sources familiar with some loan reviews lenders have made for shale firms, the loans the banks are willing to extend to drillers are not only shrinking in amount, but are also becoming more expensive to repay.

Some banks are also concerned that in case of defaults and potential swaps of debt into equity, they may end up owning oil and gas assets which they have no experience in managing, according to Bloomberg.

“A third of the banks doing upstream energy lending will no longer be doing that in the next couple of years,” David Baggett, managing partner at energy business advisory Opportune LLP, told Bloomberg.