Closing the doors on oil’s big boys

The halcyon days of cheap energy, pliable governments and a public that didn’t care about pollution or global warming are over for the international oil companies (IOCs). This we all know, or are slowly coming out of a somnambulant state to realize, but recent trends in the oil industry are presenting further concerns for IOCs at the very same time as they report bumper profits on the back of high oil prices.Energy giant ExxonMobil reported a $39.6 billion profit for last year, BP $17.39 billion and Shell $27.6 billion. Such profits were deemed ‘obscene’ in the British popular press, as indeed they might be perceived to be, but what was less noted amid the hullabaloo was that BP saw profits plunge 22% in 2006 — and is now laying off employees — and that Shell is to sink $26 billion of its profits into developing new projects. Likewise, ExxonMobil spent