In response to the industry downturn, national oil companies (NOCs) are set to slash their exploration budgets by 26 percent on average this year, Wood Mackenzie said in an analysis on Wednesday. The consultancy analyzed media announcements and tracked well plans of 11 large spenders among NOCs—three Chinese NOCs, Thailand’s PTTEP, Malaysia’s Petronas, India’s ONGC, Qatar Petroleum, Russia’s Rosneft and Gazprom, Brazil’s Petrobras, and Mexico’s Pemex. Although all of those NOCs are axing exploration budgets in the near term, the measure is likely to be just a short-term move because exploration is an important part of NOCs business for the longer term, much more so than exploration is for the supermajors, WoodMac said. NOCs invested on average 17 percent of their upstream budgets in exploration between 2015 and 2019, while the international oil majors spent an average 8 percent of upstream budgets on exploration in that period, according to […]