Big Oil's big shift

摘要

Now that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been capped, there will be many efforts to catalogue its impact - the damage to local (and perhaps global) ecologies, the lost income for tourism and fishing businesses, the increased litigation and the political fallout. However, in the clamour surrounding the crisis, the effect of the accident on the energy industry itself is often overlooked. The oil sector, not just in the US, but also around the world, will almost certainly undergo a profound evolution as partof the aftermath. The types of companies that thrive and the types that fail, and the way they do business, will permanently change in the years to come.