Oil Industry News
Alberta oil patch to reveal season of feast famine
Thursday, 22, April 2010
Calgary’s oilpatch kicks off the spring annual meeting season with a pair of gatherings expected to highlight the industry’s mixed fortunes over the past year.Husky Energy will launch the first-quarter meeting parade today with an annual tete-a-tete followed by financial numbers next week that are expected to show modest year-over-year improvements after the financial crisis and Great Recession of 2009. Encana will follow with its own AGM and earnings release Wednesday.
Analysts are expecting both feast and famine in the profit numbers. Oil companies such as Husky are expected to turn in good returns after crude prices nearly doubled from the same period a year ago. But natural gas producers such as Encana are more likely to show lower profits as prices sag in the face of higher North American supplies, said Martin Molyneaux, who heads FirstEnergy Capital’s research department.“The heavy oil and oil guys are going to make out like bandits year-over-year,” he said. “Where things got more challenging was on the natural gas side.”