Energy independents and Middle Eastern and Asian companies are expanding their presence in the Southeast Asian oil and gas industry, replacing Big Oil majors that have been shrinking their exposure to the region since the 2014 oil price collapse. In the last four years, international oil companies have sold almost 800 million barrels of oil equivalent in Southeast Asian assets, Wood Mackenzie says , adding that they have been replaced by a string of East Asian conglomerates and Middle Eastern ones. It seems that international oil players are still shunning higher-risk locations such as Southeast Asia, focusing instead on their new top priorities: low-cost, higher- and faster-return projects in the U.S. shale patch or offshore in high-promise locations. Since nature abhors a vacuum, their place is being taken by companies with a higher risk tolerance, such as Japanese JXTG Nippon and Mitsubishi, the Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company, Indonesian […]