Small potatoes for an oil giant, though, make for a feast for a solar company.
In October, Russia's richest oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested and charged with fraud and tax evasion in connection with his running of Yukos, an oil giant.
Paul Getty had the drive to go from single maverick oilman to the very slow amassing of depressed oil shares in a number of public companies that could over time be merged together into an assemblage of an integrated oil giant that itself would be valuable to a larger oil giant.
Andrew Gould, the head of Schlumberger, an oil-services giant, is not so pessimistic.
Last month Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil giant, shocked investors by admitting that it had overstated its proven reserves by 20%.
Steve Hodge, treasurer of Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil giant, says that a difference of only one percentage point in the discount rate can change the value of, say, an oil refinery with a 15-year life by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Raising additional cash in the debt markets would still be an expensive proposition for the oil giant.
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Gazprom , Russia's state-run gas monopoly, has decided to bid for the Yuganskneftegaz unit of Yukos , a troubled oil giant, in an auction scheduled for December 19th.
The only thing more impressive than Exxon's profits may be its lawyers: In its argument, the oil giant points to an 1818 maritime decision by the Supreme Court which says a company isn't liable for punitive damages based on the "wanton acts" of a ship's captain.
The Deepwater Horizon rig was leased to oil giant BP to drill an exploratory well.
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Nearly two weeks ago, Nomura analyst Alastair Syme floated what looked like a novel idea at the time: with debt financing appearing expensive and asset sales taking time, oil giant BP may consider an equity-linked financing backed by a sovereign wealth fund.
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The company is in an urgent race to control the last giant sources of oil in the waning days of the petroleum era.
However, there is fear at the Russian oil giant that this concession could become worthless in an era post-Saddam Hussein.
An infomercial pitchwoman takes on the fast-food giant over its cooking oil promises.
The move is an attempt to hit back at the Russian government which is forcing the embattled oil giant to sell Yuganskneftegaz, its main production unit.
His largest stock holding remains Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, which trades in the U.S. via an American Depositary Receipt (ADR) with the ticker symbol PBR.
Sinopec, the Chinese oil giant, and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed an agreement to explore oil in Zavareh, Kashan, 205 kilometers south of Tehran.
That goes for the national oil company, Petrobras, for Vale, a mining giant, and Embraer, an aircraft-maker.
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In an interview last year, Phillipe Boisseau, head of the gas and power division for French oil giant Total (which has a bunch of JVs with Chinese companies) explained the Chinese thinking.
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