Mineral oil company
Mineral oil companies (also mineral oil companies) are groups that are active in the production, refining and distribution of mineral oil or crude oil and petroleum products.
Economical meaning
Crude oil is one of the most important and most widely used raw materials , especially as a raw material in the chemical industry , as a fuel in transport and as a fuel in heat generation . Thanks to the enormous importance of oil, the oil industry is the largest economic sector in the world. The dependence of the industrialized countries on oil gives the oil industry a strategic position of power. Mineral oil companies are therefore very influential worldwide and have a strong lobby , which is often criticized by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
For much of the 20th century, the oil markets were characterized by cartel formation and oligopolization . After the Achnacarry Agreement in 1928, a cartel of leading oil companies, the so-called " Seven Sisters ", was formed. This cartel achieved a dominant position on the world market, especially in the 1950s.
Basically, oil companies can be divided into two groups, the private, listed companies and the state-controlled oil production companies. While the oil companies in the USA and Great Britain have traditionally always been private, listed companies, in continental Europe they were mostly under state control until the 1980s and 1990s and were largely privatized only in the last 10 to 20 years. In practically all oil-exporting countries, however, the oil production companies are under state control.
Western multinationals such as ExxonMobil , Royal Dutch Shell , BP , Chevron , Total and ConocoPhillips currently account for 15 percent of global oil production. The state-controlled companies in the oil-exporting countries have by far the largest share of global oil production. With a daily output of 10.3 million boe , Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Saudi Aramco , is the world's largest oil company.
Because of the increasingly scarce oil resources, the western oil companies are increasingly entering the field of renewable energies .
Due to the strong increase in demand for oil and natural gas in recent years and the associated sharp price increases, the oil companies have been able to increase their sales and profits considerably. In terms of turnover, there are seven oil companies among the 20 largest listed companies in the world.
BP generated more than $ 63 billion in profits from 2011 to 2014. Overall, the profits (after taxes) of the four oil companies Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP and Chevron in the same period amounted to approximately 400 billion dollars (about 362 billion euros).
Largest private oil company
| Companies | Sales (2008) 1 2 in billion USD |
Profit (2008) 1 2 in billion USD |
Delivery rate 1 in million boe per day |
Safe reserves 1 in billion boe |
Seat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExxonMobil | 477.4 | 45.2 | 4,237 | 22.8 |
 United States
|
| Royal Dutch Shell | 448.4 | 24.5 | 3.473 | 11.8 |
 Netherlands
|
| BP | 365.7 | 21.7 | 3,926 | 17.7 |
 United Kingdom
|
| Chevron | 273.0 | 23.9 | 2.667 | 8.6 |
United States
|
| Total | 180.0 | 16.2 | 2.356 | 10.9 |
 France
|
| ConocoPhillips | 246.2 | −16.9 | 1.936 | 9.4 |
United States
|
| Eni | 108.9 | 9.6 | 1,770 | 6.4 |
 Italy
|
1 according to the annual report of the individual groups
2 for the sales of Total and Eni the same exchange rate of 1.2888 as used by Shell in its annual report
The large international oil companies are often referred to as oil multinationals . The term is often used in critical discussions about the behavior of companies towards employees, questions of environmental protection and globalization.
This contrasts with an increasing role of the predominantly state-controlled or heavily state-influenced oil production companies such as Saudi Aramco (10.3 million boe per day), PEMEX (3.7 million), China National Petroleum Corporation (3.5 million), Petróleos de Venezuela (3.3 million), Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (2.5 million), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (2.3 million), Petrobras (2.0 million), Lukoil (1.9 million) and Rosneft (1, 7 million).
criticism
The American oil companies were or are still considered worthy of criticism: The systematic elimination of trams in the USA, for example, is on their account, but also the blocking of direct charging batteries for electric vehicles through the purchase of the patents valid until 2014 by Chevron ( then Texaco).
There are unsolved environmental problems in oil production, the costs of which are only no longer passed on to the general public when they become known at all, such as the radioactive waste from oil production, which has hardly been taken into account . In contrast to previous years, the corporations have to pay for the damage caused by an oil spill , but the risks of extraction are also increasing due to the increasing effort.
See also
- List of oil companies
- Peak oil ( peak oil )
literature
- Anthony Sampson : The Seven Sisters. The Great Oil Companies and the World They Made . Hodder and Stoughton, London a. a. 1975, ISBN 0-340-19427-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean-Claude Debeir, Jean-Paul Déléage, Daniel Hémery: Prometheus on the Titanic. History of energy systems. Frankfurt a. M. 1989, pp. 202-208
- ↑ Five Years of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: Time to Free Yourself from the Drip of Oil . ee-news.ch, April 17, 2015
- ↑ The history of the never-for-sale EV1 and RAV4-EV electric cars in California ev1.org (English) accessed on January 7, 2014