Mergers and acquisitions are how an industry normally handles tough times. Asset prices drop, some companies can no longer survive on their own and become targets for those with the means to grow through takeovers. The latest crisis, however, was different. The M&A wave started slowly, because a year ago, many people doubted that the oil and gas industry would be able to recover from the twin blows of the pandemic and the energy transition drive it spurred. Yet when it began, the wave carried several huge deals. The interesting thing about these deals was that almost none of them involved the vertically integrated supermajors as buyers. The Financial Times’ Justin Jacobs referred to these new pandemic-inspired majors in the U.S. shale patch as “super independents.” In a recent article , Jacobs noted that deals worth more than $30 billion were completed in the second quarter of the year […]