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January 31st, 2015:

BIG OIL: Who will blink first to set the M&A scramble in motion

Screen Shot 2015-01-31 at 08.53.48With more than $110 billion of oil and gas assets on the block as companies big and small count the cost of the collapse in oil prices, it is now a question of who will blink first to set the M&A scramble in motion.

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Article published by Reuters 30 Jan 2015 under the headline:

Buyers bide their time in $110 bln oil asset sell-off

* Half of the assets on sale are in North America

* North Sea could prove a hard sell

* Potential buyers holding out for further price falls

* Wave of deals expected within three to six months

By Ron Bousso

LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) – With more than $110 billion of oil and gas assets on the block as companies big and small count the cost of the collapse in oil prices, it is now a question of who will blink first to set the M&A scramble in motion.

Energy groups with spare cash, venture capital funds and multinational and state oil companies are eyeing assets with valuations that have largely tracked the halving of the oil price to less than $50 a barrel since last June. read more

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Oil rout gives Exxon and Shell reason to buy rival ‘sisters’

Screen Shot 2015-01-31 at 08.53.48…a major deal over the next year that will bring together two of the super majors, or see one of their smaller rivals swallowed up, is highly likely – and almost a certainty if historical precedent is anything to go by. Certainly, if the oil rout of the late 90s is anything to go by, a major deal among the industries big “sisters” is just around the corner.

Article By Andrew Critchlow, Commodities editor, The Telegraph, published 30 Jan 2015 under the headline:

Oil rout gives Exxon and Shell reason to buy rival ‘sisters’

First there were the “Seven Sisters”, a term coined in the 1950s to describe a cabal of the world’s biggest international oil companies (IOCs), which at that time controlled the supply of fossil fuels with a vice-like grip.

Then came the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and the subsequent Middle East oil crisis, which would gradually see their power over more than three-quarters of the world’s crude wrestled back by newly independent states in the Persian Gulf.

By the late 1990s – with oil prices at around $20 (£13.20) per barrel – the original seven had grown much bigger and been morphed into new giants, which consumed their smaller rivals in a race to acquire what little of the world’s oil and gas reserves still remained open to them. read more

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
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