As oil firms slash billions of dollars of investment to survive the market crash, France’s Total and Italy’s Eni are making some of the smallest cuts, gambling in the hope of big-ticket discoveries that will reward them when prices recover. Both approaches carry risks. Intensive exploration programmes mean higher costs and lower profits in the short term, with no guarantee of finding new fields. But firms that scale back too far may damage future growth prospects, forcing them to splash out on acquisitions. Wood Mackenzie analysts expect this year’s exploration spending to fall to just half of a peak of $95 billion reached in 2014. Against that background, Total’s 21 percent cut is among the smallest. The French company, which pursued a “high risk-high reward” strategy under late chief executive Christophe de Margerie, will still spend $1.5 billion on exploration this year, including off Myanmar, Argentina and Nigeria. “Our […]