Rise in Oil and Gas Exploration Activities Benefit Marine Seismic Equipment and Acquisition Market

[Newsman]

- Rise in multi-client projects in Africa and Latin America cement global prospects of marine seismic equipment and acquisition market

- Spate of new oil and gas reserves discoveries boost demand

ALBANY, New York, May 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Growing demand for cutting-edge technologies in marine seismic equipment has driven the evolution of the marine seismic equipment and acquisition market. Developing regions of the world notably Africa and Latin America are seeing a massive rise in oil and gas exploration activities, where marine seismic equipment have been in high demand. This has fueled lease rounds in all key markets.

The global marine seismic equipment market stood at US$ 410.6 Mn in 2018. Clocking a CAGR of 4.80% from 2019 to 2027, the market is likely to reach worth of US$ 626.1 Mn by 2027-end. During the same assessment period, the marine seismic acquisition market is anticipated to clock a CAGR of 5.60%; it stood at US$ 4.2 bn in 2018 and is anticipated to reach worth of US$ 6.4 bn by 2027-end.

Key Takeaways in Marine Seismic Equipment and Acquisition Market Study

Among the various technologies, the 3D survey contributed a massive share of more than 6/7th of the global share in 2018
Regionally, Europe expected to be the leading market; application in conventional oil reserves will help it retain dominance through 2027
Players shifting focus on the Middle East and Africa as region of numerous lucrative opportunities in global marine seismic equipment and acquisition market
Mediterranean region expected to be hotbeds of exploration activity in marine seismic equipment and acquisition market
North America to be a notably lucrative avenue in construction, mining, and oil and gas industries; the regional market will see promising growth year-over-year

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rise-oil ... 00190.html

[yout]

At least there is a good news. Situations in Canada and U.S.A. are really bad. Massive layoffs.

[geophix]

I am surprised that Texas is far from the worst state in terms of unemployment rate. I thought Texas would be hit harder due to the oil price.
Texas is in the middle and Nevada is the worst: https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

[GuyM]

I think this is more of an "advertorial" than a news release - they sell this report (and others) annually to equipment suppliers.

Of all of the marine seismic companies (which now excludes Schlumberger and CGG) PGS tend to do a fairly decent roundup of the state of the global marine (streamer) seismic market in their quarterly reports.

- They are cold stacking 2 out of 8 vessels, so 25% of their remaining fleet; cold stack is where the ships are going to be put of service for some time, and will take significant work to bring back into service as work is done to help them survive being tied up, unused. They are warm-stacking one additional vessel which means they will still run maintenance cycles and so on, but not have a full time crew. So from 8 vessels operational to 5.

- They are cost cutting by $100m; usual suspects are there (layoffs, pay freeze, bonuses cancelled), CAPEX reduction of $30m

- a comment about "other measures to preserve liquidity" suggests a degree of cashflow pain...

Slide #22 shows their model of the streamer market globally, which worse case is a 66% reduction from the highs of 2013.

And remember this is the PGS executive putting a brave face on for the shareholders and the market....

https://www.pgs.com/contentassets/5fb33 ... tation.pdf

[yout]

Slide 23:
Longer-term view:

Recovery of seismic market likely strengthened by current capacity reductions and pent up exploration and
production demand

It means: If we survive, we'll have a bigger piece of the pie in the future.


Short-term measures during demand shortfall:

Secure sufficient liquidity
Protect cash flow
Regain position to continue debt reduction

It means: let's do everything we can do to survive.

[GuyM]

The latter means they are getting worried about servicing their debt, I suspect; normally contractors run up spec library data, as this creates an "asset" on the books that can be amortised (depreciated) over several years, spreading the cost.

But the contractors all did that (to death) already from 2015 onwards....

Tough times; Shearwater are very aggressive...