For much of the past three years, the oil majors have struggled to adapt to the new reality of low oil prices, while at the same time, their smaller and nimbler rivals deftly pivoted to the ebbs and flows of oil price movements. Big Oil, it has been said, was ill-equipped to deal with $50 oil, dragged down by the enormous expenses on their billion-dollar megaprojects. Shale, on the other hand, was the future, and production surged in places like the Permian Basin. The oil majors finally saw the writing on the wall, and followed their smaller competitors by pouring money into the shale patch . But, ironically, the outlook for the oil majors looks better – at least in the short run – than it does for some shale drillers. The recently released second quarter numbers were relatively strong for the largest oil companies, most of which emerged […]