Talk:Big Oil/Archive 1

Acknowledgement of authorship
Substantial material on this page was merged in from the contemporaneously created Big oil article authored by Jasonkibby. BD2412 T 03:34, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

British Petroleum and BP
BP is no longer British Petroleum, It is known by the initials 'BP' so i changed the name on the page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.76.54.60 (talk • contribs) 06:35, January 27, 2007 (UTC)

Total
Shouldn't this page include Total?

Total has little to no impact on the United States. The article states that it deal with the companies dominating the US market, 5/6 of the supermajors. Gunis del 03:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge
As no apparent issues with the proposed merge, moved info to Supermajors and redirecting this page.Jawsdog 16:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Mobil is not part of Total
The diagram lists Mobil as a subset of Total, whereas it should only be listed under ExxonMobil. Total's brands are: Total, Elf, and Fina only, according to the source listed in the notes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.85.222.166 (talk) 16:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Diagram has other errors too -- e.g., missing Amoco under BP —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.142.197.225 (talk) 17:26, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Chevron
ummm why isnt chevron on the list because it comprises annual revenue over $200 billion making it larger than Total & ConocoPhilips... just a suggestion; lol —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.232.90.138 (talk • contribs) 20:57, 29 August 2006


 * I added Chevron back on to the list.--SeanQuixote | talk | my contribs 08:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Four or six?
on this page it lists 6 supermajors but on both the BP and the ExxonMobil pages it says that there are 4. anyone know what it really is? --Jiggpig 14:54, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

The four supermajors were ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Total. But recently ConocoPhillips and Chevron grew in profit and revenue so they are the added 2. The pages that say 4 are simply outdated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gunis del (talk • contribs) 22:36, 1 November 2006


 * Reference for six needed: Traditionally, as noted by Gunis del, the term had been used to refer to 4 companies. I think it is important to note that in the article, as that is what many would be expecting.  Since Wikipedia is not a place for us to define the terminology, it is important that the article include a reference that indicates that the current common usage is to six companies. We cannot set the bar as to whether or not a company is included.  The references I've found, albeit older, have all been to four companies.  &mdash; ERcheck (talk) 13:52, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
Can refer to Talk:Seven Sisters (oil companies) for further discussion/background on the proposal.Jawsdog 23:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Discussion closed with no concensus to merge. See Talk:Seven Sisters (oil companies). Cheers! Wassupwestcoast 13:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Fortune
The article mentions that they are all top 25 on Forbes' list but they are also all top 10 on Fortune's list. Just pointing it out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.92.179 (talk) 01:41, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Profiteering
It might be worth mentioning that Royal Dutch Shell just posted record profits.

$75,000,000 a day !! --Hobmcd (talk) 16:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Someone has added an advertisement at the bottom of this page.
The only other comments are that figures used are all from 2006, but some spammer has added an advertisement to the bottom of this page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.74.33.222 (talk) 15:30, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Oil Production
Are the numbers available for the daily or yearly production from the supermajors, and a comparison with total production? I'm curious as to what percent of the world's oil these companies provide. TastyCakes (talk) 16:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Can they produce more than they have access to?-- T HE F OUNDERS I NTENT  TALK 17:14, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well most of the time they have royalties, so they end up with "cost oil" that goes to the government and "profit oil" that goes to them. I guess these and other intricacies would make it difficult to put exact numbers on production... TastyCakes (talk) 19:18, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The article mentions the ca. 5% of reserves controlled by 'Big Oil', but indeed desperately needs also to mention Big Oil's share of world production (barrels/day). Yes, there are many places (countries) where there are production sharing agreements (PSAs) that result in oil companies getting their share of 'cost oil' and 'profit oil' barrels, a share which varies e.g. as the oil price changes or as the original CAPEX is recovered, but whilst PSA terms complicate things the resulting numbers are unambiguous and publicly available. They are audited numbers that are released to stockmarkets in quarterly reports, annual reports and so forth. Clear information about Big Oil's (remarkably small) share of reserves and production is desperately needed to inform public debate as political pressure in the West mounts to increase domestic production. Chris24359 (talk) 20:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. The amount produced by the supermajors is larger, but not a huge amount larger.  As you can see here, even the biggest two (Exxon and BP) produce less than 3% of the world's oil each, and I would guess the combined amount from the supermajors is well below 15%, but I don't know where to get the exact numbers. TastyCakes (talk) 00:28, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Big tobacco?
Why is "Big tobacco" listed in the "See Also" section of this article? All of the other "see alsos" relate to energy or oil in some way. The only connection I can see is that "Big tobacco" is another smallish group of large companies in one industry; however by that logic the Big Four of accouting firms ought to be listed as well, among others. I would simply take it out but I didn't know if there was a connection I didn't understand. However, if there is, the connection ought to be explained, since another as unfamiliar with the subject as myself is likely to have the same question. Thanks. -Sketchmoose (talk) 16:17, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree there's a pretty tenuous connection if any. I'll remove it.  TastyCakes (talk) 16:42, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Profit
Is RDS not the company with the largest profit in the world? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.187.118.229 (talk) 12:57, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If you visit their respective articles, you'll see that in 2009 ExxonMobil had a profit about 3 times larger than Shell. TastyCakes (talk) 13:08, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

BP/Amoco?
Could this not just be condensed into 'BP'? Exxon and Mobil are listed as one single entity as is Royal Dutch Petroleum and the Shell Company. TomB123 (talk) 21:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Outdated sources
Most of the articles retrieved for citation are ~5 years old, the exclusion of ConocoPhillips from the rest of the group is outrageous. These 6 companies have grown to be dominant in the oil business, that especially includes ConocoPhillips. 142.161.184.191 (talk) 21:38, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
 * ConocoPhillips isn't excluded if you read the article, but many third party sources such as Reuters do exclude it from the definition of 'supermajor', and it is right that the article reflects this.Rangoon11 (talk) 23:28, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Conoco ($250 bn.) is already bigger than Total ($200 bn.)--88.8.210.171 (talk) 19:51, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

new section
Time for Big Oil to Rethink Its Bigness? "Vertical integration cuts into profits for some companies" by Joe Carroll with Edward Klump and Brian Swint November 10, 2011 BusinessWeek The bottom line: Marathon’s move to unload its refineries is being imitated by others in the industry. ConocoPhillips is targeting a $20 billion spinoff.

141.218.36.56 (talk) 22:22, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Moved this here.  99.181.147.59 (talk) 07:22, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

ConocoPhillips
Are CP still a "supermajor" after the split? 90.225.83.57 (talk) 19:33, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Six or Seven?
In this article it says "seven supermajor". Then the next phrase count only 6 companies. However, in the chapter "Composition and present status" there are 7 companies (adding Eni s.p.a to the list)

Can someone confirm the correct number please?

Thanks in advance.

Khemphoud (talk) 10:12, 26 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Eni was added in without proper sourcing and has now been removed. Rangoon11 (talk) 14:43, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

ENI, LUKOIL AND REPSOL ARE BIGGER THAN CONOCO/PHILIPS Lukoil is a private company with $139 bn. in revenues.--83.33.102.139 (talk) 03:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: As per no opposing voices against WP:COMMONNAME... MOVED.  Red Slash 18:51, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Supermajor → Big Oil – A simple WP:COMMONNAME request. Extended rationale below. --BDD (talk) 16:19, 7 June 2013 (UTC) While it's true that the "big oil" search might return, say, descriptions of a big oil rig, a cursory check suggests it's the supermajor search that's much more likely to contain false positives, from a band by that name to classes of large things, such as software errors or bridges. It might be preferable to keep the more academic name if Big Oil were used exclusively pejoratively or informally, but this does not seem to be the case. If the move is successful, the current section on the "Big Oil" term could be moved up to the lede. WP:CRITERIA says article titles should be consistent with those of similar articles. In this case, I look towards Big Soda, Big Media, Big Chocolate, and Big Tobacco. --BDD (talk) 16:19, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Support per nom -- 65.94.79.6 (talk) 02:02, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment. Big Oil was merged into Supermajor back in 2007. If moved to the title Big Oil, it definitely needs history merge to be done. In the case of move, the article needs some rewriting, so I am not so sure if the move will have any added-value. Beagel (talk) 19:12, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * History merges are only done when a page is moved by copy-paste, not when two pages are text-merged into one. However, the old history has to be moved somewhere to make way for the page move. Jafeluv (talk) 09:58, 19 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.


 * See WP:Parallel histories. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:34, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Other supermajors?
Why aren't Lukoil or Rosneft considered supermajors? They're both publicly-traded and would certainly qualify as supermajors on the basis of their annual sales or net assets alone. Gazprom (~50% public) and Petrobras (~40% public) also have substantial floats. There are also equity securities for PetroChina and ENOC with smaller but still very real floats. If the issue is government ownership, Eni has some degree of government ownership, but it's still considered a supermajor. (See the Eni article, which claims it is the 7th supermajor.) Just curious as to what definition is being used here... Thanks, ask123 (talk) 19:20, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Gazprom
I have removed that company from the list as it is not considered to be a supermajor despite its size. It is owned by the Russian Government and deals highly with natural gas. It has been around for many years and was never fully referred to as a supermajor, The 6 companies that are currently listed have been measured mostly by the Fortune 500. Saudi Aramco and other country owned oil businesses are a part of their respected country. Country owned companies do not belong on this page, we may aswell list the USA or Saudi Arabia as a whole if that happens. Gunis del 06:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC) $$Insert formula here$$

Next year the acquisition of TNK-BP by ROSNEFT can create another "public oil major" similar to PDVSA or Petrobras.--88.8.210.171 (talk) 19:51, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Eni also has government ownership... What are the actual rules for determining what companies are and aren't "supermajors"? ask123 (talk) 19:22, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Big Science which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 10:59, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

outdated information
Some of the information in this article seems to be dated, and there are some contradictions as to which of the Big Oil companies is largest, presumably because different paragraphs were written at different times. Could someone knowledgeable about the subject do a rewrite? Rick Norwood (talk) 16:56, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

And why is the chart referring to Europe as EU? Since when is Europe synonymous with the undemocratic EU?80.56.229.71 (talk) 12:44, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This page should probably be updated to reflect the current market leaders in conjunction with this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_companies_by_revenue And, maybe it should have a separate section that identifies other petroleum companies that are majority state-owned, and also reference the impact of OPEC/OPEC+ and which countries/companies are members.