Something is shifting across the energy landscape—and it’s not just about oil prices. Confidence is quietly eroding. In our Monday Macro View, the latest Dallas Fed Energy Survey shows a sharp rise in uncertainty among U.S. shale operators, with outlooks turning negative for the first time in over a year. That sentiment is echoed globally, as shown in our Market Sentiment Tracker, where stagflationary clouds are gathering on the horizone as economic momentum falters in key markets like the U.S., Eurozone, and China. The result? A world where the cost of doing business is rising just as demand starts to wobble. Those cracks widen in our Big Read, where the physical oil market reveals deeper imbalances: Asia’s oil imports are weakening, refining margins have compressed, and speculative money is retreating. It’s against this backdrop that STEP Energy is making a decisive pivot. After years of operating in both the U.S. and Canada, STEP is shutting down its U.S. fracturing business altogether, citing lost contracts and margin compression, while leaning into a more stable outlook in Canadian gas basins. Taken together, these stories showcase that operators, markets, and companies are all pricing in an imminent slowdown.
*Premium Subscribers
**Enterprise Subscribers
Learn more about a subscription here or email us directly: info@primaryvision.co
