Redrawing frontiers: Natural resources firms

Such are the heights that the oil price has reached that just about every politician, be they in the UK or China or America, has made it their business to figure out ways to force the cost of the black stuff back to a more reasonable level, or at least to talk about the need to do so.

…There is, however, a flip side to this boom. In March, the US government pocketed a record $3.7bn from the auction of new offshore exploration permits in the Gulf of Mexico

Just a month earlier, Royal Dutch Shell paid $2.1bn in a separate auction for blocks in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. The price for the 277 blocks was the most it has ever paid for offshore exploration rights. When the company begins drilling wells there by the end of the decade, it will officially bring to an end a 25-year absence of oil and gas groups in the ecologically sensitive area. Six other companies, including ConocoPhillips, also bought blocks in the contentious area. The total take for the US government: $2.6bn.

Independent