The oilfield will crash and you’ll see the only bright spot of the economy for the last several years fall on hard times. Wait for it. it won’t take much longer.
The budget cycle in the oilfield starts in August, polishes up in October, closes the year, takes a breather for the holidays and tax close, takes January to crank back up and by February the die is cast for the rest of the year. I doubt we’ll be seeing any lucky sevens rolled for the oilfield in 2015.
One significant difference I see from past times of oil bust is the increasing role of Natural Gas and particularly Natural Gas Liquids for Petrochemical Feedstock.
I see those markets as much larger that our past times of bust. While it will not help every player, there will remain more significant market for drillers, pipeline, terminals, etc than just oil.
Those prices have become decoupled from oil prices.