Hard Times The Great Energy Bust

By RICHARD WOODBURY MIDLAND

Along Highway 80 in West Texas between Midland and Odessa, giant drilling rigs sit rusting in the winter sun. Gas wells that dot the bleak mesquite- covered prairie lie shut down. Downtown Midland has the stark look of an evacuated city, with empty storefronts and vacant building lobbies.

The scene across America's oil patch these days bears a chilling likeness to the bust that befell the region in the mid-1980s, when energy-production jobs plunged more than one-third. But in fact the situation today is worse. While many parts of the U.S. economy are struggling through the recession, few are as hard hit as energy. By every measure, these are among the toughest times since that first gusher at Spindletop in 1901 -- more akin to the Great Depression than the cyclical booms-and-busts since.

Across the South and West, drilling activity for crude oil is at its lowest point in 52 years. The rig count, the best gauge of life in the oil patch, hovered last week near an all-time low of 660. Production from existing fields has shrunk to its lowest since 1962. Scores of drillers, producers and support firms are laying off, folding up or going bankrupt. Warns Denise Bode, president of the International Petroleum Association of America: "The industry is nearing a state of economic collapse."

More distressing, this latest downturn gives every indication of being permanent. Faced with languishing prices, lower profit margins and tight environmental hurdles to new exploration, the major oil companies are selling off their properties, packing up their drilling gear and heading overseas. Ten billion dollars in assets are on the block as exploration and production head for Africa, South America and the Far East, where drilling costs can be cheaper by half and government sweeteners make new ventures enticing. As the majors lay off workers and leave, those independent companies that can are following. Others are closing up shop or retrenching. Asserts energy scholar Daniel Yergin: "We're seeing a fundamental contraction on the domestic side along with one of the greatest migrations in the history of the oil industry."

Unlike the bust of the mid-'80s, which was marked by nose-diving crude-oil prices, the immediate problem this time is natural gas. Often extracted from the same formations as oil, gas accounts for 24% of the nation's energy consumption, mainly in heavy industry. Producer prices at the wellhead have been in a free fall for months, plummeting last month to $1 per 1,000 cu. ft., down 23% from a year ago. At that price, producers say they can barely turn a profit, and many who can still afford to operate are shutting their supplies in the ground in hopes of an eventual upturn.

Campaigning in the oil patch last week, President Bush responded to the plight -- and political anger -- of natural-gas producers by taking steps to bolster demand. He removed regulatory barriers that have hampered utilities from converting power plants fueled by coal and oil to natural gas. At the same time, Bush lessened restrictions on the sale of compressed natural gas for cars and other vehicles. In Washington, Energy Secretary James Watkins declared, "The worst thing we could do is allow our oil and gas industries to decline the way we have."

The gas price slide has been a roundhouse punch to the big energy states of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico, still struggling to climb back from the earlier debacle. Scores of wildcatters, who find most of the domestic crude and who went after gas when the market fell apart, have folded in the past 18 months.

The impact has been just as severe in Canada, where oil and gas are a bedrock of the economy, contributing nearly 12% of the $588 billion gross domestic product. Since 1989, nearly 15% of the Canadian work force has been & laid off, and major producers are shuttering refineries and closing thousands of service stations. Last year Imperial Oil, owned largely by Exxon, posted the first loss in its 111-year history. Another giant, Gulf Canada Resources Ltd., stunned the industry last month by walking away from its stake in a huge undersea oil project on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Outside the oil patch, few notice and many benefit from the price slump. Supplies of oil and gas for home heating and industry, abetted by a string of six warm winters, have remained abundant. And the price of gasoline, an average $1.03 per gal. nationwide for regular, is the lowest in months, thanks largely to OPEC and other foreign producers; they have made up the drop in domestic production by supplying 43% of U.S. oil consumption. On the other hand, the public has not benefited from the drop in natural-gas prices, as pipeline companies and distributors have gobbled up the savings before the fuel reaches households. Though prices at the wellhead have tumbled from $2.66 to $1.16 since 1984, household users in Charlotte, N.C., still pay a rate of $6.14, only 51 cents less than they did 8 years ago.

The steady rise in oil imports has alarmed many planners and industry strategists, who fear that the nation may be setting itself up for another crisis if war flares again in the Middle East. Domestic production, dropping at the rate of 300,000 bbl. a day, has declined to its lowest level in 40 years. The Congressional Office of Technology Assessment projects that by 2010 the nation could depend on imports for nearly 70% of total supply, an amount that Houston energy consultant Louis Powers estimates will take 36 supertankers a day to deliver. Warns Powers: "The mind-set is to let the Saudis give us all we need. It's a policy we will all live to regret."

In many respects, the current slump is an extension of the mid-'80s energy bust that saw prices plummet to $9 per bbl. Just as the region was attempting to diversify out of its energy dependence, the gulf crisis suddenly forced prices to $40 in 1990, spurring some drillers to crank up rigs again. But when the war ended, hopes were dashed just as quickly; prices slid back down, and the small trickle of investment money dried up.

The big concern now is the depressed market for gas, which is still the target of most drilling because its plentiful reserves are largely untapped and exploration carries tax breaks for investors. "It's a bloodbath," says $ gas entrepreneur and former corporate raider T. Boone Pickens. "How many more hits can the industry take?"

Faced with declining profits from U.S. oil and gas operations, such major firms as Chevron, ARCO and Phillips are putting more money into overseas exploration than they are investing at home. "You have to go where you can find the reserves and make a profit," explains Wayne Allen, president of Phillips, which has hiked foreign spending 15% since 1989 to bankroll drilling in such places as Gabon, New Guinea and Italy. All told, according to a Salomon Brothers survey, U.S. oil companies are increasing foreign investment nearly 10%. At the same time, the 21 largest firms are cutting exploration spending in this country by 13%.

Far more troubling than price fluctuations and investment patterns is the fact that the U.S. is running out of economically recoverable oil. Known reserves that can be extracted at current market prices have been declining almost steadily for 22 years, and the current supply of 26 billion bbl. would last the nation barely four years at present usage rates. And while vast formations remain untapped, they are in environmentally sensitive areas -- the Alaskan wildlife refuge and offshore California -- that Congress has put off limits.

Oilmen argue that the failure to open such reserves will only speed the move overseas and increase U.S. dependence on imports. Marathon Oil Co. is pouring nearly three-fourths of its $750 million current production budget into foreign ventures. "Other countries covet our technology and the jobs we bring, and they're luring us with sweet deals," says Marathon president Victor Beghini, "while our government is turning its back."

Oil firms also complain bitterly about an array of regulations that require refineries to meet costly standards for reformulated gasoline and other clean- burning fuels. As a result, Shell, Amoco and Unocal are among big producers that plan to close or downsize facilities. Oilmen say domestic production is further threatened by proposed EPA regulations that would impose tight controls on drilling wastes and other by-products. Such rules, they warn, will force the closing of hundreds of small "stripper" wells that make up 75% of the nation's total.

A more basic worry is that unless drilling rebounds to the 1,100-rig level and stays there, the industry's infrastructure will be so impaired that it won't be able to come back -- ever -- and U.S. production will slip further. Oilmen decry the lack of attention and support that they feel the industry gets -- from the White House on down. "We should have a domestic energy policy, but we still don't have," asserts Pickens. Baker Hughes economist Ike Kerridge agrees: "There's a real danger in driving too many people out of business. The government ought to be concerned."

The trouble is that the oil and gas industry is one that many Americans have learned to love to hate. With the memory of Big Oil's vast profits in the 1970s and early '80s still fresh in their minds, consumers and lawmakers outside the oil patch have little sympathy for the industry's woes. But that could prove shortsighted at a time when U.S. reliance on foreign oil is rapidly on the rise.

Reversing that trend will take a combined effort by Washington and consumers and the companies themselves. Energy firms should develop new technologies that will let them extract domestic oil and gas cheaply enough to make a profit even when prices are low. And motorists should be able to tolerate an oil-import fee that would raise gasoline prices a few cents a gallon at the pump; that would provide fresh incentives for domestic drilling and produce revenues to help reduce the federal deficit. Without some such policy, the U.S. could find itself paying for cheap oil and gas today with skyrocketing prices when the next energy shock hits tomorrow.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: NO CREDIT

CAPTION: VANISHING RIGS

CHEAPER GAS

FEWER JOBS

RISING IMPORTS

SHRINKING PRICES

With reporting by Courtney Tower/Ottawa