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GSCW chat recap: The fall and rise of US shale between 2020 and 2021

“There are two or three things that will be really important and relate to the way investors perceive the industry. The first is price.”

John Kingston
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FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: 2021 Outlook for the U.S. Shale Oil and Gas Market

DETAILS: A leading analyst of the U.S. upstream oil and gas industry reviews the wild ride that the market took in 2020 and into 2021, with prices plunging, drilling activity falling with it and then a late-year revival that took a lot of people by surprise. Companies are drilling again, but will it last?

SPEAKER and INTERVIEWER: Benjamin Shattuck is the research director for the Americas region at Wood McKenzie, a leading energy analysis firm. He is interviewed by Kevin Hill, executive publisher at FreightWaves.

“Tight oil is in a pivotal movement. It’s shifted from a new and exciting technology and not even fully understood and maturing to a place where we understand the impact that shale has on price cycles.”


“At the same time, investors are changing what they’re asking for from these companies and reevaluating whether these companies are investable in the future. In the last decade, the targets have shifted.”

“Tight oil historically has drilled through the downturns because there was so much excess capital. That’s not the case today.”

“You’re seeing consolidation and streamlining. Head counts are going down. The cost side of the equation is being examined closely. When we emerge from this, we will have fewer producers who will be more streamlined, so at a given price, they can generate a higher return or produce more oil.”


John Kingston

John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.