Despite a string of good-news messages in recent weeks, the price of oil continued its weeklong slide on Monday, taking with it many of Norway’s oil-focused stocks.
A large swathe of listed offshore suppliers and energy companies took a pounding all day and were still sliding through mid-afternoon trading.
In all, some 45 offshore-related stocks were in negative territory on Monday, with Siem Offshore falling the most by 12.78 percent.
Drilling contractor Bor Drilling was next, down 11.51 percent. Drilling contractor Odfjell Drilling was down 7.48 percent, Awilco 7.2 percent, Seadrill 6.8 percent, Standard Drilling 3.81 percent, Shelf Drilling 3.3 percent. Hardest hit among offshore supplier-contractors appeared to be DOF, which fell 8.13, followed by oil services investment company, Akastor (-7.47 percent), Aker Solutions (-7.16 percent) and support outfit Oceanteam (-5.65 percent). Wind-and-oil contractor, Subsea 7, also slid in value, its stock sliding by 4.89 percent.
Seismic outfit Axxis Geo Solutions led the survey outfit fall, with investors trading in shares to the tune of 9.85 percent.
Electromagnetic Geoservices (-8.77 percent), PGS (-7.67), Seabird (-5.2 percent) and TGS-Nopec Geophysical (down 4.17 percent) filled out the pack of companies in this segment that took a dip on this trading day.
The carving-away by investors comes despite good news at the weekend when a Statistics Norway published numbers suggesting 2020 would be a banner year for the supply chain.
Norwegian oil companies surveyed suggested investments in this most capital-intensive of all oil markets would rise to about USD 20 billion from USD 19.5 billion.
Earlier last week, rig shows suggested deepwater rates were rebounding — the last segment forecast to rebound during the dark days of the downturn in 2014-2016.
One of the predictions back then was that subsea tree production should have picked up by now, followed in short order by deepwater day rates: now, trees production may not have rebounded to pre-downturn rates, and only deepwater day rates moved the needle last week.
One of the reasons for continued slack might be the operators themselves.
Equinor had once reported its stockpiling of subsea equipment, and it is not clear whether that supply has run out or whether other operators have also stockpiled subsea equipment.
Monday afternoon in Oslo saw Equinor (-4.83), OKEA (-2.86) and Aker BP (-4.86) fall, as Brent hovered at 56.2 after a 3.85 percent drop.