Liam Denning, Columnist

Halliburton’s World Isn’t Ending

The market is overreacting to temporary Permian troubles.

July 24, 2018 at 2:06 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

The phrase “temporary efficiency drags will create headwinds for additional upward pricing in the third quarter” may cause your eyes to glaze over. For shareholders of Halliburton Co. — whose CEO uttered those unfortunate words on Monday — it induced sudden nausea. The stock collapsed 8 percent, its biggest one-day drop since November 2014, when OPEC’s surprise decision to keep pumping sent oil into a tailspin.

That’s the first clue the reaction is overdone. This isn’t the start of an oil crash. Nor is there a major deal hanging over Halliburton’s head, as was the case back then (it had just announced its ultimately doomed bid for Baker Hughes).