This year was the worst for oil companies and the market over the past 10 years, writes The Wall Street Journal . In the first nine months alone, oil producers wrote off assets worth $ 145 billion.
For example, in 2015, this amount was half ($ 72.1 billion). At the same time, this year’s statistics did not include the write-off of ExxonMobil for $ 20 billion ( in the fourth quarter), as well as a $ 10 billion write-off of Chevron.
The total amount of assets written off was about 10 percent of the market capitalization of all the world’s oil companies, worth over a billion dollars. In addition, many businesses did not survive this year and went bankrupt.
Earlier, analysts predicted low oil prices for the world in 2021. According to experts Fitch , a barrel of Brent will cost $ 45 next year. Bloomberg Agency predicted the end of the oil era. Even OPEC agreed that the era of hydrocarbon fuels is drawing to a close. Pandemic COVID-19, provoking a radical drop in oil supplies around the world