Oil majors The decline of the West

The global oil industry used to have a distinctly Western face. Fifteen years ago, European and US oil majors accounted for 99% of the value of the top thirty listed oil companies. No longer. Rosneft’s IPO marks a further waning of the old Western dominance of the industry. After the Russian group lists on the London Stock Exchange, the Western share will drop to less than two-thirds. There are several reasons for this. Cost-cutting consolidation during the 1990s shrank the number of large West...