The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

Altogether, all the oil that the supermajors produce for their own account is less than 15 percent of total world supplies. Over 80 percent of world reserves are controlled by governments and their national oil companies. Of the world’s twenty largest oil companies, sixteen are state-owned.8 Thus, much of what happens to oil is the result of decisions of one kind or another made by governments. And overall, the government-owned national oil companies have assumed a preeminent role in the world oil industry. In these circumstances, the cast of characters in the world has become more complex, with a host of companies joining the ones whose names run through this book. Some of these companies have already appeared in these pages; some are new. Saudi Aramco—the successor to Aramco, now state-owned—remains by far the largest upstream oil company in the world, single-handedly producing about 10 percent or more of the world’s entire oil with a massive deployment of technology and coordination. The major Persian Gulf producers control for the most part their production, as do the traditional state companies in Venezuela, Mexico, Algeria, and many other countries. The Chinese companies—partly state-owned, partly owned by shareholders around the world—continue to produce the majority of oil in China but have also become increasingly active and visible in the international arena. So have Indian companies. The Russian industry is led by state-controlled giants Gazprom and Rosneft and ...