Quarterly financial results from the world’s biggest oil companies have been a bit lackluster of late, including Shell, Exxon and Chevron.  Later this week, we’ll hear from ConocoPhillips and Occidental to see if they, too, post disappointing results.

For those in the business of bringing oil out of the ground, “there's a lot of disappointment out there, mostly in the price of crude oil,” said Tom Kloza with consulting form Turner, Mason & Company.

The problem? OPEC+ continues to ramp up production.

“That's tipping the market into a little bit of oversupply,” said Allen Good at Morningstar.

That’s pushed down prices and company earnings. But, Good said, big oil has been strategic with layoffs, deploying technology and selling off costly assets. Which means: “They have a set level of earnings at a certain oil price today is higher than what they may have generated five or 10 years ago,” he said.

Doing more even at a lower oil price. As for U.S. operations, Matthew Bernstein with Rystad Energy said the current price per barrel in the mid-sixties may not be ideal for these big companies.

“But it doesn't break the model like prices in the 50s or low 50s would,” said Bernstein.

Though smaller oil companies are not quite as well positioned.

“It really becomes a question of, frankly, survival for a lot of these companies where their inventory is more limited compared to the largest players,” he said.

We’ll likely see cost cutting and consolidation that may not be great news if you work in the Permian Basin. But as for the rest of us, “the good news for consumers is we're going to have cheap gasoline,” said Kloza at Turner, Mason & Company.

He expects a stretch of lower prices at the pump.