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Oil Majors Must Count on M&A to Replenish Reserves, WoodMac Says
- Companies have cut exploration budgets to ride out oil’s slump
- Shell had worst replacement ratio last year among the majors
Lower oil prices have taken a toll on majors’ reserves, with some of them -- such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc -- forced to write down as much as 200 million barrels.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Major oil producers will rely on acquisitions for about half their reserve replacement in the future after cutting exploration budgets to weather the crude-price collapse, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd.
Big oil companies are no longer trying to replace all their production through conventional exploration, the energy consulting company said in a report published Tuesday.