据伦敦彭博社3月10日消息,当石油输出国组织在2014年底发动石油价格战时,大多数人认为美国页岩气注定要灭亡。事实上,大型石油巨头遭受的损失最为严重,他们背负着昂贵的大型项目、雪佛龙公司、英国石油公司(BP plc)以及其他公司的重负,努力适应能源价格的下跌。
慢慢地,这些公司发现了如何在原油低价位持续长时间的时代生存下来。他们削减了成本,更重要的是,学会了如何阻止成本再次上升。在一个喜欢为每个项目定制解决方案的行业中,公司开始讨论标准化。在瑞士达沃斯举行的闭门会议上,大石油公司的老板们并没有浪费时间在重要的话题上,而是讨论如何分享从水下阀门到泵的所有设计。
价格冲撞发生近五年后,变革开始奏效。世界上主要的能源公司已经设法按下了重置按钮,使他们今天的利润与他们在100美元以上/桶石油价格的世界上所做的相似。
高盛集团(Goldman Sachs Group Inc.)首席石油行业分析师Michele Della Vigna曾对大型石油公司做出过评论,他说:“大型石油公司已经能够从这次衰退中重新崛起,在成本曲线上变得越来越强和越来越低。”
据彭博社(Bloomberg News)汇编的数据显示,去年,全球最大的8家综合石油和天然气公司的支出水平降至1180亿美元,较2013年危机前的2150亿美元峰值下降了45%。
胡晶晶 摘译自 彭博社
原文如下
Oil's big reset: Energy majors learn to thrive after price crash
When OPEC started an oil-price war in late 2014, most people believed U.S. shale was doomed. In reality, the giant oil majors suffered most -- burdened by expensive mega-projects, Chevron Corp., BP Plc and the rest struggled to adapt to the fall in energy prices.
Slowly, those companies figured out how to survive in the lower-for-longer price era. They cut costs and, more importantly, learned how to stop them from rising again. In an industry that favored tailored solutions for every project, companies started to talk about standardization. At closed-door sessions in Davos, Switzerland, Big Oil bosses didn’t waste time on self-important talk, but instead discussed how to share the design of anything from underwater valves to pumps.
Nearly five years after the crash, the cultural change is starting to work. The world’s major energy companies have managed to press the reset button, allowing them to make profits today similar to what they did in a world of $100-plus/bbl oil prices.
“Big Oil has been able to re-emerge from this downturn stronger and lower on the cost curve,” said Michele Della Vigna, the top oil industry analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., who had been a critic of the majors.
The level of spending at the world’s eight largest integrated oil and gas companies fell last year to $118 billion, down 45% from a pre-crisis peak of $215 billion in 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.