Oklahoma City based-Tapstone Energy chairman Tom Ward says if the nation is ever going to see any major increase in oil exploration and production, prices will have to hit $75 a barrel. Not $50.
It’s what Ward told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in a recent appearance, stating, “In our business, the dirty little secret is you can’t really spend within cash flow and grow production.”
Crude prices are still in the $47 dollar range but haven’t hit $50 a barrel and U.S. oil production is still at about 8.8 million barrels per day, down from a high of nearly 9.7 million barrels daily.
“Whenever you make a decision to stop drilling, it takes a number of months or years in order for that decision to actually impact the market,” explained Ward, the former co-founder of Chesapeake Energy who has been named in a number of lawsuits stemming from an indictment in March of the late energy producer Aubrey McClendon.