Slashdot Mirror
Are We Seeing the End of Big Oil?
Hugh Pickens writes "Cyrus Sanati writes in Fortune Magazine that up until now, it has been widely accepted that being bigger was better for oil companies, but the announcement that ConocoPhillips plans to break up into two separately traded companies, separating its exploration and production unit from its refining and marketing units, took Wall Street by surprise, raising uncomfortable questions about the future of Big Oil. 'That's because the exploration side and the refining side of the oil business have little to do with one another,' writes Sanati. 'Contrary to popular belief, Big Oil has almost no control over the price of oil these days. That power squarely rests with oil-rich nations that hold most of the world's oil reserves and the Wall Street banks and hedge funds that speculate and make markets in the oil trading game. So even though ExxonMobil pumps oil, it can't guarantee that its refining unit will be able to profitably process a barrel into gasoline or heating oil.' ... 'If the ConocoPhillips story is a success for shareholders, there will be calls to break up Big Oil just in time for the annual meetings in the spring. So by this time next year, it is possible that Big Oil will go the way of Rockefeller's once gargantuan Standard Oil — with the markets, not the government, forcing a break up this time.'"
Who would need to be bigger? Seriously huge profits, and most exploration is already done. These companies have been exploring for years now for deposits. It is probably just a crafty way to hide the hordes of money they are making...
with the markets, not the government, forcing a break up this time
<sarcasm>Wait, the market is providing a better solution than the government? How is that possible?</sarcasm>
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
we do use hydrogen as fuel. It just currently brings carbon along for the ride. you want to pay extra to separate the two first? go right ahead. you can't get it for free.
Where do you draw the line? Do you allow Apple to tie firmware in with the hardware? What about operating systems? Does the operating system include the interface?
exploration and production unit from its refining and marketing units, took Wall Street by surprise, raising uncomfortable questions about the future of Big Oil.
The economist podcast discussed it some last week, as they discussed their previous weeks issue. I've noticed a disturbing trend where /. bifurcated around March and now some stories are fresh but the late ones are actually going further back in time as time goes on. Wasn't this a ST:TNG plotline?
Anyway, the ominous BS makes no sense. I've been following this market for, well, decades, now, and all it boils down to is the oil majors are extremely competent at exploration and production, both directly and indirectly by financing other companies exploration and production work. The refining operations are almost meaningless now because every nation either wants to shut them down to prevent pollution (although the hypocrites still want gas for their SUVs) or they want massive overproduction capability for strategic warfare reasons. So refining is a dead market. As for the marketing units, yeah, they're real geniuses alright, look how everyone loves BP, for example.
So all it amounts to is focusing on what makes a net positive on the income statement and casting off the deadwood that is a net negative to the income statement. Its the oil industry equivalent of joe average non-IT focused business outsourcing their IT department, just like they've outsourced their electrical production and (mostly) their "business standard uniform" production and maintenance.
The reason its spun as doom and gloom, is they have no empathy and only see the effect on themselves. The marketing unit sponged off the profits of the production unit to make CNBC commercials that were beyond stupid. Now they are cast off like the debris they are, so they won't have the cash to pay to CNBC... So, MSM is going to get less advertising bucks from the oil majors. Hmm, I wonder how they feel about that? Expect some attack stories in the near future along with the doom and gloom, and then the MSM will find someone else to attack and it'll all be ignored.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So "Big Oil has almost no control over the price of oil these days. That power squarely rests with oil-rich nations that hold most of the world's oil reserves" is NOT the government (actually many foreign governments) controlling the price of oil?
So the power of governments of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia becomes a triumph of libertarian free market ideology?
Yes, in the same world where the high economic growth of the communist-run, government controlled economy of the People's Republic of China demonstrates the triumph of "economic freedom"
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
I don't think making all 25K employees 1099 contractors is gonna help anyone but the tax lawyers.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Any conglomerate should be split up.
I agree that conglomerates should (at least in most cases) be split up, but not by the government. Most conglomerates were formed when various factors favored centralizing everything. What made that economically efficient was the cost of communicating information from one place to another. It was more efficient to put all of the decision makers in close proximity to one another and send the necessary information to them at that central location since much of the same information was necessary for making decsions about disparate business entities. When the cost of transmitting information was high, this was the most efficient way to organize things.
However, as a result of this centralization, a lot of information that was only significant to one of the business entities was "lost" to the decision makers. This was not critical because the savings of only having to transmit the other information to one place made up for it. Now, as the cost of communicating information to various locations has fallen, the cost savings of centralization have diminished to the point that much of that "lost" information is now more valuable than the savings from centralization. This will gradually lead to the breakup of conglomerates along the fault lines of information.
Of course, not all conglomerates will voluntarily break up. But as their various divisions are less able to compete with the now independent divisions of their competitors, all of their divisions will suffer. If the refining side of an oil conglomerate, must get all of their oil from the exploration side they will not be able to take advantage of cost savings from dealing with outside exploration companies that are at the moment more successful than the in-house exploration division. If the exploration side must sell all of their oil to the refining side, they will be unable to maximize profit by selling to outside refiners who at the moment have a need to pay higher prices to obtain oil. If both sides are free to deal with outside competitors of the other division, the advantages of having both in the same company diminish.
The market is perfectly capable of sorting this out. If I am correct, the new companies of the ConocoPhillips split will be more successful than they were as part of one company and other companies will follow suit. Those that do not will gradually fall behind in the market until they either do so, or they go out of business.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And yet, Federal tax revenues increased by 30% from 2000 to 2007 (and then began dropping in 2008 as the Housing Bubble burst).
And this in spite of the recession immediately post-9/11, which saw tax revenues drop 10% over a two year period.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"