Big Oil's War Chest | Russell T. Rudy Energy LLC
Recently much attention has been given to the international major oil companies’ struggles to find enough cash to continue to explore, develop high potential projects and maintain or grow dividends. Now, a recent article in “World Oil” reports that the world’s six largest publicly traded oil companies have an acquisition war chest of over half a trillion dollars.
Exxon, the largest energy company in the world in terms of market value, understandably has the most resources available for acquisitions with $320 billion. Chevron has $65 billion and BP $53 billion available.
Shell is in fourth place with over $32 billion. However, since taking over British Gas earlier this year for $69 billion, it is doubtful that they will go after major prey. ConocoPhillips and Total round out the top six with $31.5 and $30.5 billion respectively.
Now that Apache has rebuffed Anadarko’s unsolicited offer, many observers feel that they are both targets for acquisition.
To read the article in its entirety, please go to http://www.worldoil.com/news/2015/11/12/major-oil-companies-have-half-trillion-dollars-to-fund-takeovers .
