The oil industry is set to further reduce spending this year as crude prices remain low, according to the head of the International Energy Agency, signaling more pain for oil services and engineering firms. Explorers already slashed capital investments this year by 17 percent from 2015 levels and are likely to deepen the cuts, Fatih Birol, executive director of the Paris-based IEA, said in an interview on the sidelines of the annual IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston. Companies may eventually top last year’s 24 percent chop and might further lower spending in 2017, he said. “We are raising alarm bells about investments cuts,” Birol said. “The worst-case scenario is we see a third year of spending cuts” in 2017, he said. The tightening hurts oil services companies including Halliburton Co., Schlumberger Ltd. and Weatherford International Plc, as well as construction and engineering firms such as Fluor Corp., Bechtel Group […]