Big oil is getting pushed around

peakoil.com -> iht.com, peakoil.com -> rigzone.com :

Exxon Mobil's biggest competitor in the quest for oil reserves is not BP or Royal Dutch Shell. It is the governments of China, South Korea and India. Chevron and Exxon Mobil lost an auction for Nigeria's most promising oil and gas fields last year to companies controlled by South Korea. In Venezuela, Royal Dutch Shell's bid to develop an offshore gas deposit collapsed when Brazil's state oil company stepped in.

The world's biggest publicly traded oil producers are losing reserves to state-run companies willing to pay higher prices for energy needed to fuel growing economies. Petróleo Brasileiro, Cnooc of China and Oil & Natural Gas of India have all bought reserves in the past year. The increasing competition for oil and gas fields is driving up costs, hurting corporate profits, while bolstering crude oil prices by inflating the cost of production. In the early 1990s, less rivalry for fields existed because countries like China produced more oil than they consumed and prices were lower.

More than half the oil and gas reserves that changed hands since 2003, through corporate acquisitions or the sale of drilling rights, went to state-owned companies, BP's chief executive, John Browne, said in a speech in Singapore in November. "Energy is an issue of national security in which governments, and the state companies that they have established, are likely to be involved for a long time," Browne said.

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