Liam Denning, Columnist

Coronavirus Hits Oil's Weakest Credits Hardest

Frackers’ best vaccine is a bolstered balance sheet.

February 7, 2020 at 2:24 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.

Not feeling so well.
Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

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It is possible that even now, after five years of bruising re-education, Saudi Arabia harbors dreams of finally overcoming the U.S. fracking industry’s cockroach-like grip on life.

Unfortunately for Riyadh, coronavirus threatens its own health, so instead of letting rip, it’s talking about further supply cuts. Unfortunately for the frackers, such talk — absent full-throated endorsement from Moscow — still leaves Nymex oil futures pegged at just $50 a barrel. Make no mistake, virus or no, there is a deep malaise in the oil market.