Selecting the Seven Sisters
Carola Hoyos, chief energy correspondent, explains the methodology behind the “Seven sisters”
The new Seven Sisters
Resources
The old ’Seven Sisters’ were the western companies that once dominated the world’s energy industries. The FT’s new seven are mainly state-owned companies from the emerging world.
More on FT.com
The new Seven Sisters: oil and gas giants dwarf western rivals
As leading international energy groups struggle to replenish their reserves, state-backed companies from the developing world are achieving leadership in the sector.
Ask the experts: The ‘New Seven Sisters’
Nader Sultan, former chief executive of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, Luis Giusti, former chief executive of PDVSA, and Carola Hoyos, the FT’s chief energy correspondent, answer your questions on the implications of the shift in power to oil and gas companies from the emerging world.
Related content and features
Methodology
History
The evolution of the Seven Sisters
Even those who only follow the oil industry casually, will know the phrase “Seven Sisters” is steeped in history
Profiles: The new sisters
Saudi Aramco
Saudi Aramco has carved out for itself the role of the world’s central banker of oil. It can produce nearly three times the amount of oil of any other company
Gazprom
No other company has kept Europe, and now increasingly Asia, on tenterhooks more intensely in the past two years than Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant that controls all of the country’s pipelines and export routes.
CNPC / PetroChina
When PetroChina last year became the world’s third-biggest listed energy company by market value, it was a stark illustration of how the world energy order had changed.
National Oil Company of Iran
The National Oil Company of Iran has been at the forefront of Tehran’s strained relations with the US
Petrobras
Petrobras is a great domestic success story that is beginning to move on to the world stage
Petronas
Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil company, has been described as the role model that other national oil companies would like to follow.
Petróleos de Venezuela
Venezuela’s president has turned Pdvsa from a foreigner-friendly national oil company of competent technocrats into a pawn of his nationalist agenda
Honorary mention: Iraq National Oil Company
The Iraqi cabinet’s long-awaited approval in February of the country’s new hydrocarbon law takes it one large step closer to resurrecting its national oil company.
Profiles: The old sisters
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil is the world’s largest listed international oil company and arguably also its most successful. Carola Hoyos explains why
Chevron
Chevron was thrust into the supermajor category by its 2001 merger with Texaco, and further boosted by its recent acquisition of Unocal after a bidding war with China’s CNOOC.
BP
BP’s reputation has plunged in the past two years as a result of a string of problems in the US.
Royal Dutch Shell
Shell’s forays into unconventional oil, such as Canada’s oil sands, may be costly, but like many major oil producers, its options are becoming limited.
