A recent survey of 60 producers and service company executives confirmed the upstream oil and gas industry is in a survival mode, said analysts in the Houston office of Raymond James & Associates Inc.Those executives exhibited “a profound sense of near-term caution with [exploration and production] price expectations well below current strip pricing.” They said, “The survey suggested that industry insiders are expecting 2009 oil and gas prices to average roughly 20% lower than Wall Street expectations—the first year executives have been more bearish relative to the Street since we have started this survey. Already, budgets and costs are coming down, and both ar...