Oil companies in stoical mood as price stays low but costs fall

Sixteen months after the start of the oil price crash, companies met in Cape Town for Africa Oil Week in stoical mood, with job cuts mostly behind them and contractor costs sharply lower. While the oil price is not generally expected to fall further, a recovery may take some time yet, and majors announcing Q3 results the same week have revealed grim headline figures. Apart from a happy few such as Brian Maxted of Kosmos Energy, and FAR’s Cath Norman, whose longstanding commitment to Senegal’s offshore has been triumphantly vindicated with the SNE and FAN discoveries, few companies had much activity to report, and this is likely to continue into 2016.