Downstream shields majors

摘要

The majors’ integrated business model has softened the blow of lower oil prices to their quarterly profits. The companies’ downstream divisions have better captured the benefits of strong industry-wide refining margins, after the majors sold some underperforming or non-core downstream assets and implemented efficiency and cost-cutting programmes. “Downstream is really five revenue streams, and four of them are not dependent on the economic environment — retail, lubricants, trading and supply, and chemicals. It is only refining that has a level of volatility linked to exogenous factors,” Shell chief financial officer Simon Henry says. “This performance you are seeing is all of those levers working, being pulled and delivering.”