Long-term Strategies of Gigantic Oil Companies How 'Peak oil' and 'Global Warming' shape their future?

摘要

Forbes issued a comprehensive report about the biggest companies around the world on April 2009. Interestingly 5 out of first 11 are from Oil and Gas industry (Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Total). But year by year role of some factors are more critical in the future of oil industry and consequently, these gigantic companies. It's not very easy to rely on a relatively inexpensive crude oil anymore; GHG emission is being center of focus every day; the fast rate of increasing in fuel consumption worldwide could make the market challenging and rival technologies by around renewable/sustainable sources of energies could have a serious impacts on the future of these giants. But if the nightmare of "Peak Oil" in 20 to 30 years ahead could be added to the problem, the situation would be even more challenging. So could it be the start of an alarm situation for these big companies, after about a century in convenience for them? In this paper, strategies of these companies- referred as the Giants - towards mentioned challenges, in the past, present and future will be studied. This has been done based on review of literature, their official websites and white papers such as reports and future outlooks. Also rationale and fundamentals of such strategies and positioning will be analyzed.