Oil industry crash leaves Wall St playing catchup

Chicago

BAD news is pouring down on the US oil industry so quickly that analysts can't keep up.

Half of the oil explorers, rig owners, refiners and pipeline operators in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index are at least 40 per cent below the target prices set by analysts, double the number of a month ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. When the rout in crude markets began in June 2014, there were no companies in the group lagging their targets by that margin and one in four was actually higher than analysts were forecasting.