I've been waiting on Fidelity now for a couple of weeks for them to work out the details with XOM's attorneys as regards meeting the requirements in order to accept the deal. Reportedly Fideltiy is trying to do this once for all of their "handful" of customers in this boat, i.e., people who dissented but now agreed to take the deal. I want everything to land in my 401K account. According to Fidelity just a moment ago, they will be getting back to me by about Tuesday next week with the details. So I expect by end of next week I will have my hands washed of this and be waiting on XOM to deposit $45 per IOC share in my account and then wait for the CRP if there is any. As I've said, I'm not expecting any.
Looks like site activity is pretty dead, as it should be.
I checked with colleagues at two universities that produce a lot of petroleum engineers. One guy is a professor at one place and the other is the department chair at the other school. They said that 2014 set records for enrollment and like a pig passing through a python's digestive track, this huge lump will be graduating in record numbers in May. After that the classes shrink significantly in size. They are sizing to graduate less than half as many students PER YEAR that they will graduate in this current Spring semester. So that's more than a 75% decline if one assumes similar Fall and Spring graduating numbers. Engineers often take more than 8 semesters to graduate. In fact one school is under its target. The problem is for some schools once you have entered your college, like PETE, you just about have to leave the university and go somewhere else if you want to change majors in midstream. We know kids stuck in PETE who's parents decided they would just ride it out. Timing is everything in this business.
So as I've mentioned before 3 things will make oil prices go up. Restrained supply (as they are sorta doing now), sustained years of industry under investment that fails to develop volumes to replace that produced AND shortage of trained, experienced people, especially engineers, geologists, geophysicists to do the work. The double impact of the retirement of another bubble of 55+ year old guys (the last of the brain trust) AND shortage of new young bloods, to me, is a near certainty that will begin manifesting itself within about 2 years. The glut of PETEs, like the glut of oil, will need to "rebalance." If oil demand holds steady or grows slowly, then it seems prices will have to go up. FWIW. This is about 2 years later than I originally predicted/hoped for the big turn around. No one could have predicted OPEC would hold out for so long nor that the US onshore industry would be so resilient, so determined, to perservere and thrive as they have. The Arabs learned a lesson.
