Real estate billionaire Sam Zell said he is a buyer of distressed oil assets as the U.S. oil sector sees a slowdown in an interview Nov. 14 on Bloomberg TV.
He said some oil companies are running out of money to drill and are selling their cash flow to raise more capital.
“The amount of capital available in the oil patch is disappearing,” Zell said. “I compared it to the real estate industry in the early 1990s, where you had empty buildings all over the place [and] nobody had cash."
The U.S. oil sector is seeing a decline in the number of active drill rigs as the equity and debt markets remain closed to most exploration and production companies. Chesapeake Energy Corp., once the second-biggest U.S. producer of natural gas, has warned investors that it may not be viable as a “going concern” if low oil and gas prices persist.
