-Caveat Lector- 1998-12-17: UK: YEAREND - BIG OIL'S CANNIBALS HUNGRY FOR MORE. (REUTR) By William Maclean LONDON (Reuters) - Oil majors will stampede for new trophy deals in old Middle East haunts in 1999 while pursuing a merger spree back home to cut costs and raise market share. Battling low prices and weak demand, Big Oil's herd instinct will drive companies into each others' arms and fire a parallel race for the world's cheapest and biggest reserves in the Gulf. Both trends gathered pace in a redrawing of the world's energy map in 1998, spurred by a disastrous 40 percent price crash born of Asian economic collapse and rising Iraqi exports. As the century closes, hungry corporate cannibals will dine again on Wall Street for more mega-merger economies of scale. "We think that there is more consolidation to come - alliances, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions," said Jay Wilson of bankers J.P. Morgan. Prospects for an early oil price recovery are remote with a stubborn stock overhang and rescue efforts mired in bickering inside producer club OPEC. GOLIATHS OFFER BETTER FINANCING, TECHNOLOGY, REACH Sweeping budget cuts forced on oil firms by the price rout will take a good two years to provide big falls in crude supply - too late to save weaker explorers and even some large integrated companies. A Reuters poll of experts projects an average price for benchmark Brent crude of just $13.50 a barrel in 1999, unchanged from this year after a 30 percent slide. "The only thing you can conclude is that there is going to be more consolidation," said Exxon chairman Lee Raymond. The Texas-based firm is merging with Mobil to form the world's largest company by revenue, reuniting the largest successors from the 1911 breakup of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. The $240 billion giant will dwarf a proposed $110 billion British Petroleum and Amoco combination created to nip the heels of the larger Royal Dutch/Shell. Already earning pre-merger incomes greater than those of many countries where they operate, such new goliaths will have the muscle to grab the lion's share of the best upstream prospects and widen downstream access to the consumer. Such titans don't want only multi-billion dollar savings. They target more leverage from new technology by spreading it over a wider base, improving returns on capital to shore up a must-have status with institutional investors. They also want sheer size to attract Middle East countries seeking capital from foreign partners to expand their reserves, the world's most plentiful and the cheapest to extract. Rod Peacock of J.P. Morgan, a banker involved in Exxon and BP's respective mergers, says oil super-giants offer Gulf states unrivalled technology, financial strength and global reach. GULF REOPENING PRESSURES SAUDI, MEXICO TO FOLLOW SUIT And mergers may simplify the Gulf states' choice. "Being big wins you a seat at the table. It means people pay attention to you," said Bob Maguire, a managing director at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter . That seems to be the case in Kuwait, seeking to boost its output capacity in an undeclared race for foreign capital with other Gulf states as well as Venezuela, Nigeria and the Caspian. "I think it made our life much easier," said Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Saud Nasser al-Sabah. "Instead of negotiating with BP and Amoco separately, we have both of them in one. Instead of Exxon and Mobil, we have them both in one." The Gulf reopening signals the return next century of Middle East OPEC powers to their former position at the heart of the global oil industry after 20 years as nationalised backwaters. Dusting cobwebs from some of the oldest oil relationships, the reopening also pressures state giants Saudi Arabia and Mexico to join the investment race or risk losing out. It also means that the upside-down world of international oil exploration, where the bulk of development has occurred in costly areas like the North Sea, will see a return to commercial normality as investment shifts to t he Gulf's low-risk fields. "I suspect that by 2005, 2010, we will see the normal laws of economics reasserting themselves, with the volume increases going to the low-cost producers," Royal Dutch/Shell chairman Mark Moody-Stuart told Petroleum Intel ligence Weekly. "And if that happens it almost certainly means lower oil prices," said Moody-Stuart, whose company is the latest to confirm talks on possible post-sanctions projects with Iraq. Maguire says being huge gives companies the financial clout to make a big bet on a sole risk basis upstream rather than settling for the syndicated returns earned by smaller rivals. MEGA-MAJORS COULD SHRUG OFF TAKEOVER PRESSURE A possible additional motive for OPEC states inviting in foreign capital is to divert that money away from non-OPEC areas that are the source of competing production, he said. "For that reason, you'd rather bring in the guy who's spending a lot rather than spending a little," Maguire said. Not every investor hails the creation of super-giants. Keith Palmer, a vice chairman of investment banking at N.M. Rosthchild, sees doubts about whether a company capitalised at more than $50 billion needs to become bigger to be more efficient. "Should we welcome or encourage the creation of mega-companies which are relatively immune from capital market pressures - i.e. they are takeover proof?" But for smaller pure exploration firms that lack downstream earnings and for whom debt and equity financing is increasingly difficult and costly, mergers or takeovers look inevitable. And with the international industry's geographical centre of gravity returning to the home of cheap oil, industry watchers recall oil tycoon J. Paul Getty's mid-century declaration: "If one is to be anybody in the oil business, one must have a footing in the Middle East." (C) Reuters Limited 1998. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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