Big Oil


Big Oil is a name used to describe the world's six or seven largest publicly traded oil and gas companies, also known as supermajors. The term emphasizes their economic power and influence on politics, particularly in the United States. Big oil is often associated with the fossil fuels lobby and also used to refer to the industry as a whole in a pejorative or derogatory manner.
The supermajors are considered to be BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and ConocoPhillips.
The term, analogous to others, such as Big Steel, that describe industries dominated by a few giant corporations, was popularized in print from the late 1960s. Today it is often used to refer specifically to the seven supermajors. The use of the term in the popular media often excludes the national producers and OPEC oil companies who have a much greater role in setting prices than the supermajors. Sinopec Group, a state-owned Chinese oil company had greater revenues in 2018 than any of the supermajors.
In the maritime industry, six to seven large oil companies that decide a majority of the crude oil tanker chartering business are called "Oil Majors".

History

The history of the supermajors traces back to the "Seven Sisters", the seven oil companies which formed the "Consortium for Iran" cartel and dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. The Seven Sisters were:
Before the oil crisis of 1973 the members of the Seven Sisters controlled around 85% of the world's oil reserves.
The supermajors began to emerge in the late-1990s, in response to a severe fall in oil prices. Large petroleum companies began to merge, often in an effort to improve economies of scale, hedge against oil price volatility, and reduce large cash reserves through reinvestment.
The following major mergers and acquisitions of oil and gas companies took place between 1998 and 2002:
This process of consolidation created some of the largest global corporations as defined by the Forbes Global 2000 ranking, and as of 2007 all were within the top 25. Between 2004 and 2007 the profits of the six supermajors totaled US$494.8 billion.

Influence

As a group, the supermajors control around 6% of global oil and gas reserves. Conversely, 88% of global oil and gas reserves are controlled by the OPEC cartel and state-owned oil companies, primarily located in the Middle East. A trend of increasing influence of the OPEC cartel, state-owned oil companies in emerging-market economies is shown and the Financial Times has used the label "The New Seven Sisters" to refer to a group of what it argues are the most influential national oil and gas companies based in countries outside of the OECD, namely CNPC ', Gazprom ', National Iranian Oil Company ', Petrobras ', PDVSA ', Petronas ', Saudi Aramco .

Maritime Oil Majors

In the maritime industry, a group of six companies that control the chartering of the majority of oil tankers worldwide are together referred to as "Oil Majors". These are: Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Total and ConocoPhillips. Charter parties such as "Shelltime 4" frequently mention the phrase "oil major".