American Economics Thread
- Thread starter Bernard
- Start date
i disagree. You are looking at it from a stock/market point of view. Oil and gas is cyclical. You have years of boom and years of bust. In the years of bust no way are you going to get much dividend. Aint Exxon usually super cheap with their dividend too when compared to Chevron? Also, staff salary is a tiny percentage of the cost, maybe 5% at most for engineering & project management as a % of the overall investment.
The true reason is schedule. Out of the billions spent on exploration, only 1 in 100 will yield something worthwhile. That 1 will pay for the other 100 many times over though. When you make the FID to turn that 1 into a real project, you basically need to get it finished as quickly as possible to get your cashflow running again. Something that normally takes 2 years to make costs $1mil, but if you want it done in 1 year, then it'll cost you $10mil. That's the logic and reason why its expensive. When the times are good, everyone wants to get in on the act so everyone builds these at the same time, causing more strain. The last boom in Australia, you had 6, that's right, 6 8mtpa - 15mpta LNG plants costing 20bil + each on the go at the same time, each sucking up 3000-7000 men in the field. Bechtel had 4 of them, so they had less, though still significant cost blow outs compared to Gorgon & Ichthys which were run by KBR consortiums. Right now in the gulf, we have Cameron, Freeport, Golden pass, Calcasieu Pass, Plaqueman LNG along with quite a few olefins projects on the go. The jobs got expensive because everyone decided to do them at the same place at the same time, not because of dividend. It gets worst when things go wrong and you get delayed. You realize how much it costs per day to have 3000 people and their plant and equipment standing around doing nothing? When you get 6 months of it, or a year and a half of it, any wonder why its high? The only saving grace is once the switch goes on, usually everyone makes enough money to be happy, and make the same mistakes on the next one.
Chevron high value because it is based in California. if you know some thing about stock market. West coast firms are the dominant in MegCaps in stockmarket for past couple of decades. inflation adjusted majority of time Oil/gas salaries and dividends are near the top. No one can match there size of capex and attracting the best.
now natural gas is increasingly used in electricity production. so its importance has greatly increased.
i am stating you the obvious that all the construction demand is byproduct of Oil/Gas industry. whether pipes or ships or turbines or housing related to it.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Which EP you work for? I worked for Fluor and Worley before. Also was at Exxon for awhile.Yeah that is expected that Exxon pays relatively high. But I think you are mistaken on how this industry work. The people working in Exxon aren't the type of people that will go build you the plants.
They use contractors, as in, companies like Bechtel / Fluor/ Worley Parson /Technip to run all their feasibility studies and then progress the things to EPC phase. Now, the talents working for these companies, aren't necessarily locked down to oil and gas jobs.
I work for them, lol, we get cycled onto all sorts of job for career development. We may spend 3 or 4 years on the same mega job, but then we will also spend 3 or 6 months building a waste water treatment plant, or bridge, or wind farm. My pay don't fluctuate when moving between these works. Of course on those little jobs, we tend to go lean because there isn't $$$ in it.
End of the day, employees for these contractors get told which projects they go on, and they tend to bring their core team with them. There is probably variation in availability of crafts, but its a non issue if these contractors are self performing. In the grand scheme of things, the wage difference of these crafts are absorbed through all the efficiency/cost blow outs that are part and parcel of this industry.
it is only ever a problem when you stack multiple projects into the same area and have them peaking at the same time. Then you will have resourcing problems and competition for labor. Usually we would talk and try to flatten the curve, but schedule blowouts aren't usually planned
Predictable behaviours and timing. Is it just a bot?
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
If we pretend that some small European countries don't exist.
That's called being fat. Amongst modern countries, people worry about eating healthy and organic while people grasping at straws try to make it look like eating more calories is the goal. You can pay $12 for an organic chicken breast salade with 280 calories and just $4 for a 2,000 calorie fried chicken brownie mac n' cheese Hungry Man crap.
LOL Nice, that's not even a phrase anymore. What about cars? China leads the world in next generation EVs.
So does Mexico and Colombia. A strong performing economy is full of luxury highrise apartments that sell for millions in dense megacities like Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc... NYC is ok but everything is... old... with air conditioner asses sticking out of every dirty brown window.
Like what, basic postal service? Amazon Prime that takes 4 days? LOLOL In China, you can see the live location of your package by app and indicate to the carrier to deliver to you whereever you are on the map. Try that with FedEx; you'll hear the truck driver's dispatcher laughing at you through the radio LOL
I worked for Bechtel & Kiewit.
Higher caloric intake will make you obese. Besides, China is the largest vehicle market by far.
I'm starting to think the poster isn't American or from any developed nation. Connecting standard of life with caloric intake is something typically used to measure quality of life for the bottom quartile/half of nations. Also his takes seem to indicate that he has never lived in US. I don't think a typical educated American use such rudimentary arguments borderlining on absurdity.