Despite rocketing prices, outlook is bleak for oil majors

MADRID – DESPITE record crude prices, the major oil companies are struggling to access resources that are being jealously guarded by national companies with whom they are forced to establish partnerships.

As paradoxical as it may seem, high oil prices do not mean a golden age for the likes of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Totalor BP.


Of course, with a barrel of oil at more than US$140 (S$190), they are seeing major profits, but the future has never seemed so uncertain.

The problem is access to reserves. The oil majors now control less than 10 per cent of world resources of gas and oil, against 70 per cent in the 1970s, according to figures released by the office of Ernst and Young at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid.

AFP