The story here is of a gradual decline in the size and importance of most of these (once) large independents. Their combined reserves and production is not sizeable compared to the super majors and majors but their history may be indicative of what is coming the way of the larger companies. All but one of these companies is American owned. Most have or had holdings in shale or oil sands but many have sold off most of these and chosen to concentrate on a shrinking core business. There is probably a fuller picture to see if their financial performances, such as debt loads or share buy back schemes, were also considered but that’s a bigger job than I’m prepared for or capable of.
For the reserves charts the right hand axis shows liquid (green) and gas (red) replacement ratio with the organic ratios and their trend lines as solid lines and total ratios, including trades, as diamond markers.
On the the production charts I have not shown R/P for the oil sands production (nor the replacement ratio on the reserves chart) as for the small producers it tends to whizz about all over the place as prices change, but see the future post on Canada and oil sands for some more details.
On the revision summary charts I have not shown the cumulative trades (acquisitions/dispositions) or adjustments and revisions if they go negative, as the charts are complicated enough as they are, though really colourful, which is what I mostly go for. However, in such cases, I have shown the final figure in the legend.
ConocoPhilips (COP)
In the last fifteen years, pretty much since its inception in the merger of 2002, COP has lost over half of its reserves, averaged below 100% replacement ratio (and falling) and seen production half…
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