Market watchers are announcing the demise of the oil majors. Not for the first time. According to Jilles van den Beukel, former geoscientist with Shell, the oil companies are indeed seeing their world shrinking. But they are not dead yet: their reason for being – the world’s demand for oil and gas – is still there. NGO’s refer to the oil majors as slowly moving dinosaurs, sitting on stranded assets that cannot be (fully) produced. They maintain that their shares are massively overvalued and that the majors should rapidly change their business model or perish. Financial analysts are worried about high costs, future oil demand and low reserve replacement ratios. They point out that the companies should prepare for an oil price that stays lower for longer rather than to keep on repeating that the current low oil prices are not sustainable. Are things really that bad for the […]