Although oil prices are now half what they used to be three years ago, Big Oil is better positioned now than it was when oil prices were sky high, Michele Della Vigna, co-head of European equity research at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC in an interview on Monday. In the dizzy spending days between 2010 and 2014, when oil prices were above US$100, those high prices were actually “dreadful time” for the international oil majors, because everyone was eating the lunch, and Big Oil’s competitive positioning was destroyed, according to Della Vigna. Before the oil price crash of 2014, governments were raising taxes, services companies were raising costs, and national oil companies were bidding for assets. In today’s tighter price environment, Big Oil is in a renewed competitive position because there is competition for new capital investments, which means lower production taxes, much lower production costs, and easy access to […]