Meet the shrewdest operators in today’s oil markets

Almost a decade ago, a price war broke out between petrostates in the Persian Gulf and the frackers in America, whose innovative drilling techniques gave rise to the shale revolution. In December 2014 The Economist put an image on its cover of both antagonists standing back to back, frowns on their faces and petrol pumps at the ready. It called the new economics of oil “Sheikhs v shale”. Missing from that picture were two companies that until then had been the biggest stalwarts of America’s oil industry, ExxonMobil and Chevron. Had they been pictured, the two crusty supermajors would probably be standing awkwardly on the sidelines, struggling to make sense of what was going on. At last, they are moving back to centre stage.