New partnerships are emerging in the global hunt for oil discoveries, with some explorers essentially offering an outsourcing service for the riskiest part of the energy business. Central to this new strategy are efforts to find an ally earlier in the process of discovering new fields, and on a larger scale, in order to save money as budgets remain tight after the oil price slump of 2014. While giants such as Total and Eni revamp exploration in-house, BP and Royal Dutch Shell have been more open to having partners do the heavy lifting of exploration in certain geographies. Kosmos Energy and BP, for example, joined forces to hoover up exploration licenses in the northern part of the African Atlantic, rather than competing against each other. In October, Kosmos entered […]