JANUARY 23, 2012
By LIAM DENNING
Even today, $1.67 trillion is a lot of money. That is the amount wiped off the combined market capitalization of the top 50 energy companies between the end of 2007 and the end of 2011. Breaking it down offers big clues on Big Oil’s prospects for 2012.
Every year, PFC Energy, a Washington, D.C.-based consultancy, ranks the top 50 listed energy companies in the world by market value. The latest, due Monday, has a surprise. The biggest gainers in 2011 were the dinosaurs of oil and gas: the supermajors. Their collective value increased by 8%, compared with a 7% decline for the PFC Energy 50 overall. It is only the second time they have led the field in the ranking’s 13-year history.
Conventional wisdom holds this shouldn’t be the case. Faith in the supermajorsExxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Totalhas waned as state-backed rivals like PetroChina have emerged and smaller competitors have opened up new frontiers like U.S. shale. Seemingly too big to grow but too small to offset the power of petro-states, the supermajors have been priced for decline.
Why did investors fall in love with them again in 2011? First and foremost: security. The S&P 500 ended 2011 down slightly after wild swings. In choppy markets, scale and cash payouts provide comfort. And the supermajors, with a collective value of $1.2 trillion at year end, provide it in spades. The three U.S. ones alone paid out 9% of all S&P 500 dividends and buybacks in the year ended September 2011, according to data from Standard & Poor’s and Capital IQ.
So how about that missing $1.67 trillion? It is gone despite the average price of Brent crude being 53% higher in 2011 than in 2007 (and 13% higher than in 2008, year of the super-spike). About half of that market value was lost by listed state-controlled national oil companies, or NOCs, like PetroChina. State support has its advantages, but it also means NOCs serve two masters: markets and mandarins. That makes them riskier investments.
While the NOCs in the ranking lost 44% of their value between 2007 and 2011, the supermajors declined by just 22%.
But it isn’t just safety that helped the supermajors lead the charge in 2011. Chevron, Exxon and Shell likely all delivered cash flow per share growth of 30% in 2011, well ahead of the traditional growth stocks of the exploration and production sector, according to Credit Suisse.
Ed Westlake, analyst at Credit Suisse, says the oil majors are more sensitive to oil prices than many investors think. In part, that is because much of their global natural-gas production is sold at prices linked to oil, rather than at the depressed, de-linked levels that prevail in the U.S.
This year, the supermajors are forecast to make $67 billion in free cash flow, according to FactSet Research Systems. That is down slightly from 2011’s expectation but still equates to a healthy free cash flow yield of 5.6%.
Goldman Sachs points out, however, that unlike a year ago, supermajor stocks enter 2012 trading at a slight premium to their smaller integrated oil peers. That, coupled with the fact that 2011’s cash-flow surge is unlikely to be repeated, means some investors’ gains may be redeployed into other energy stocks.
It seems unlikely that the supermajors will register the biggest gains in the PFC Energy 50 2012. That doesn’t make them a bad investment. With markets still unsettledEurope, in particular, remains unpredictableBig Oil will likely remain a safe haven. Stocks don’t always have to be the biggest winners to be reliable repositories of value.
Write to Liam Denning at [email protected]
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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