Oil companies' profitability fell last year in spite of the sharp rise in oil prices, highlighting their vulnerability to a downturn, an authoritative industry study has found.
The review of upstream performance published today by IHS Herold, a research firm, and Harrison Lovegrove, a corporate finance firm owned by Standard Chartered bank, found that the companies' return on capital from their oil and gas production was 19 per cent – 3.5 percentage points lower than in 2006.
The study of 232 leading quoted oil and gas companies also found they had not increased their total reserves last year, and had raised their production only slightly.
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