Page 30: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2000)

Workboat Report pricing seemingly in infinite directions.

In comments at a recent industry brief- ing, Royal Dutch/Shell Group chairman

Mark Moody-Stuart said that he expects oil prices to remain strong for the next year, but sees them falling after that as technology jump-starts develop- ment of new fields. "The price, we sus- pect, will be up for a year or so, although it will be coming under down- ward pressure," Moody-Stuart said in a wide-ranging briefing for investors sponsored by Lehman Brothers. "But in the longer-term, we do feel that technol- ogy will tend to drive price down" to $20 a barrel or less, he added.

Crude oil prices presently stand above $30 a barrel, having recovered from $10 a barrel in 1998, and companies includ- ing Shell are now looking to funnel some of their newfound cash flow back into capital projects. Shell, for instance, recently said it planned to six new North

Sea oil projects that will raise its spend- ing in the area by 20 percent to $ 1.2 bil- lion. Beyond the North Sea, Shell is also pressing ahead with exploration and production projects in the U.S. Gulf of

Mexico, where technology has allowed companies to tap deep into the waters for oil and natural gas. Shell Oil Co., a subsidiary of the group, recently said it made a major find in the U.S. Gulf of

Mexico and decided to proceed with the development of another. Together, they are expected to have oil and gas reserves that equal more than 500 million barrels of oil equivalent.

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Energy Consolidation Continues

Many who depend on a rebound in "Big Oil" E&P spending to revitalize marine operations could be waiting longer than anticipated due to continued consolidation within the energy indus- tries. Speaking to companies more than a year ago, many predicted a significant business boom by mid this year based on sustained oil pricing. Back then, the thought of a $30 plus per barrel price would have undoubtedly made these projections even brighter. And even though the business of exploring for and recovering oil has strengthened consid- erably, there remains and underlying reserve on behalf of the oil companies to unleash E&P budgets to former scale.

Mid last month Chevron, the second- largest U.S. oil company, agreed to buy third-ranked Texaco Inc. in a $35 billion stock deal that will form an energy pow- erhouse. The deal will face close scruti- ny both in the U.S. and EU, as a wave of blockbuster transactions — led by

ExxonMobil and BP Amoco — have effectively helped to redefine the world energy markets. The new company, to be called Chevron Texaco Corp., will also go head-to-head against other industry leaders like Royal Dutch/Shell and TotalFina Elf.

But a deal need not be a mega merger to have significant ramifications. Early in October, for example, Chevron, Shell and Schlumberger announced plans to form a separate corporation dubbed

OpenSpirit Corp., designed to develop and market the next-generation of mid- dleware for E&P applications and data integration. Chosen to lead the new company is Neil Buckley, who will serve as the Houston-based company's

CEO. Buckley has more than 12 years of software commercialization experi- ence in the energy business. He is a for- mer president of U.S. operations for

Merak, a division of GeoQuest. Of the new organization he said: "OpenSpirit represents a significant advancement in our industry's ability to share informa- tion and develop innovative collabora- tive solutions in a distributed environ- ment. Until now, there has not been a comparable framework capable of inte- grating data and applications from mul- tiple sources in the E&P industry."

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