据8月5日彭博社休斯敦报道,当大宗商品价格在2014年暴跌时,全球石油高管们可以对他们的矿业同行保持着优越感。
当时,这些石油巨头们均具有相对强劲的资产负债表,同时相较于他们的资产,他们的贷款比例是较低的。但矿产行业却进入了与其完全不同的低迷时期,一些全球大公司,诸如力拓股份有限公司、英美资源集团、嘉能可公司,不得不削减股息并采取严厉的开支削减措施来控制他们的债务水平。
但两年后,石油行业情况急转直下。随着原油交易价格远远低于50美元/桶,埃克森美孚、荷兰皇家壳牌等石油巨头们的总负债已翻倍至1380亿美元。债台高筑使得他们必须不断削减资本支出并削减股息。
企业高管和分析师们预测,债务危机将愈演愈烈。这些石油巨头的债务自2008年以来已经翻了10倍,并将可能在今年第三、第四季度再度攀升。
壳牌首席财务官Simon Henry在上周向投资者们表示,“债务在危机缓和之前还将继续走高,主要原因是油价。”
伍德麦肯兹咨询公司的副总裁Harold “Skip” York在休斯敦表示称,令人关注的是这些石油巨头目前还未找到阻止债务进一步飙升的解决办法。
章盈盈 编译
原文如下:
Crude slump sees oil majors’ debt burden double to $138 billion
8/5/2016
HOUSTON (Bloomberg) -- When commodity prices crashed in late 2014, oil executives could look at their mining counterparts with a sense of superiority.
Back then, the world’s biggest oil companies enjoyed relatively strong balance sheets, with little borrowing relative to the value of their assets. Miners entered the slump in a very different state and some of the world’s largest—Rio Tinto Plc, Anglo American Plc and Glencore Plc—had to reduce dividends and employ draconian spending cuts to bring their debt under control.
Two years on, you could excuse mining executives for feeling smug. As crude trades well below $50/bbl, Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other oil giants have seen their debt double to a combined $138 billion, spurring concerns they’ll need to keep slashing capital spending and that dividend cuts may eventually be necessary.
Worse, the mountain of debt, which has grown tenfold since 2008, is likely to increase further in the third and fourth quarters, executives and analysts said.
“On the debt, it may go up before it comes back down,” Shell CFO Simon Henry told investors last week. “And the major factor is the oil price.”
The main concern is that companies have so far failed to stop the increase in debt load, said Harold “Skip” York, V.P. of integrated energy at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie Ltd. in Houston.