BP said earlier this year that its capex for 2016 would come in at less than the US$17 billion it had initially planned for the year. Shell boasted a 20-percent cut in its capex for 2015 from 2014, to US$29 billion. Exxon in March said it would be reducing its capital budget for the year by a quarter to US$23 billion. To make a long story short, everyone in Big Oil is slashing spending, which is nothing new given the lower for longer price environment. The new bit is that these cuts are no longer just a knee-jerk reaction to low oil prices—they are the core of a new strategy. It’s getting increasingly obvious that this price crash hurt oil supermajors more than previous crashes. Perhaps this is only natural: the amount of new discoveries made every year will decline over the decades, as oil is, […]