The Big Guns

PB p.l.c

PB is one of the world’s most famous petroleum companies, founded as the Anglo Persian Oil company by William Knox D’Arcy in 1909. The company now employs over 100,000 people in 100 countries. Organized into three segments: Exploration and Production; Refining and Marketing; and Gas, Power and Renewables the company operates across four regions. Currently BP is developing new fields in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, in Angola, in Azerbaijan, in Trinidad, and in the liquefied natural gas business in Asia Pacific. The company is also making an investment of over $6bn in Russia through its joint venture company TNK-BP, covering oil and gas fields, refineries and service stations.

CEO: Lord John Browne

Having joined the company in 1966 as a university apprentice, John Browne was made chief executive of BP Amoco on December 31st, 1998. He has been voted Most Admired CEO by Management today in 2000, 2001 and 2002. In 1998 he was knighted at the Queens Birthday Honours.

Exxon Mobil Corporation

In 1998 Exxon and Mobil merged to form a new company called Exxon Mobil Corporation. It is the biggest non–state run gas and oil company in the world, employing over 100,000 people. It is also one of the biggest corporations in the world with an annual profit last year of $36.13 billion, becoming the biggest ever annual profit for a US company. Its main areas of activities cover exploration, production, transportation and sale of crude oil and natural gas as well as the manufacture, transportation and sale of petroleum products. Exxon currently has many projects in the CIS region including the Sakhalin I development, the ACG mega structure in Azerbaijan and two huge projects in Kazakstan, Kashagan and Tengiz. Elsewhere, the company has major projects underway in undeveloped areas such as West Africa, Qatar and the Caspian.

Chairman and CEO: Rex W. Tillerson,

A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Mr. Tillerson earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin before joining Exxon Company, U.S.A. in 1975 as a Production Engineer. He assumed his current position January 1, 2006.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies

Shell operates in more than 140 countries and territories and employees more than 112,000 people. The company are a global group of oil and petroleum companies best known to the public for their service stations and for finding and producing oil and gas at land and at sea. Some of the major projects being worked on at the moment include the Bonga Deepwater Project, Niger Delta, Nigeria; Sakhalin island in the Russian Far East (the world’s single largest integrated oil and gas project) and Na Kika, Gulf of Mexico.

CEO: Jeroen van der Veer

Following a degree in Mechanical engineering and a spell in military service Joroen joined Shell. His first Shell appointment was in process design, followed by a period on the 'shop floor' in maintenance at Pernis. Jeroen was appointed Group Chief Executive on 27 October 2004.

Total SA

Total SA first entered the petroleum market in 1954, it employees over 111,000 employees and operates in over 130 countries. As the fourth largest petroleum company in the world it produces 2.59 million barrels of oil equivalent a day and proved reserves of 11.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent in 2004. Some of their major projects include Itau in the Bolivian Jungle. Work began on this project in 1997 and the company have faced extreme conditions beginning with drilling installations having to be built at an altitude of 1,700 meters, 500 kilometres from any infrastructure, with freezing fog at the summit and torrential rains for weeks on end. In 2003 the region’s reserves were estimated at close to 10 TCF of gas. Kharyaga is the focus of Total’s exploration and production operations in Russia. The oil field lies 90 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle in the Russian Federation’s Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. Its remote location has provided many challenges for the company.

Chairman and CEO: Thierry Desmarest

Thierry Desmarest has been Chairman and CEO of Paris-based Total SA since 2000. Previously, starting in 1995, Mr. Desmarest was the Chairman and CEO of Total, which renamed itself Total SA in 2003. He had earlier served as Total's President of Exploration and Production, and was a member of the company's executive committee.

Chevron Texaco Corporation

With headquarters in San Ramon California, Chevron operates in over 180 countries and has a workforce of over 53,000 employees. In 2004, ChevronTexaco produced more than 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, with two-thirds of the volume occurring outside the United States and in more than 20 different countries. Some of its current exploration activities include Bohai Bay in China. The company also has a high success rate in exploratory drilling offshore in Thailand since 2000, discovering reserves in excess of 50 million barrels during that time. Cambodia is also providing the company with exploration activities.
Chairman and CEO: David J. O'Reilly

A native of Dublin, Ireland, O’Reilly earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1968 from University College, Dublin, from which he also received an honorary doctor of science degree in June 2002. Following his graduation he began his career at Chevron Research Co. in 1968 as a process engineer. He was elected chairman of the board and chief executive officer on January 1, 2000.

CIS

Lukoil

LUKOIL is one of the world’s leading vertically integrated oil & gas companies. The main activities of the Company are exploration and production of oil & gas, production of petroleum products and petrochemicals, and marketing of these outputs. Russia is where the company’s main exploration and production interests lie with its main resource base in Western Siberia. Most of the Company’s production is sold on the international market. LUKOIL petroleum products are sold in Russia, Eastern Europe, CIS countries and the USA. In the last few years exploration by Lukoil has focused on promising new regions of the Timano-Pechora oil province, the Caspian Sea and the Bolshekhetskaya Basin. Exploration work in 2003 led to discovery of 13 oil fields, one gas condensate field, one oil & gas field and 14 oil-bearing strata at previously discovered fields.

President: Vagit Alekperov

Vagit Alekperov graduated in 1974 from the Azerbaijan Institute of Oil and Chemistry. In 1990 he became deputy minister of the oil and gas industry of the Soviet Union, Alekperov was engaged in the formation of the first vertically integrated state-owned energy company, Langepas-Urai-Kogalymneft, which was established in late 1991 as a subsidiary of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy. In April 1993, Langepas-Urai-Kogalymneft became LUKoil Oil Company, with Alekperov as its president.

Yukos

With headquarters in Moscow and a workforce of over 100,000 employees. Yukos is one of the world’s largest non-state oil companies by reserves and market capitalization. YUKOS produced 591 million barrels of crude oil in 2003, about 16.3 percentage more than in the corresponding period of 2002. Recent exploration and production projects in recent years have included Eastern Siberia in the Tersko-Kamovsky Block of the Yurubcheno-Takhomskoye field. Since 2003 the company has also continued geological surveys in Krasnoyarsk and Evenkiya and expanded its activities in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutiya) in order to consolidate its position in the region and establish a resource base in the Far East of the Russian Federation.

CEO: Steven M. Theede

Steven Theede graduated from Kansas State University in 1974 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. He spent the majority of his career at Conoco in Houston and London, and was appointed President, Exploration & Production for Europe, Russia, and the Caspian when the company merged to become ConocoPhilipps in 2002. In June 2004 he was appointed CEO of Yukos.

Gazprom

Established in 1993, Gazprom is one of the biggest natural gas extractors in the world, supplying most of the gas needs of Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. In fact, gas produces by the company is delivered to 68 regions of the Russian Federation and is exported to 27 other countries. It produces about 90 percent of Russian gas. The major shareholder of the Company is the state having 38,37 percent of the shares (as of September 1, 2002). Nearly 300,000 people are engaged by Gazprom and its subsidiary companies. The Company’s core activities are gas exploration, production, transportation, processing and marketing. Major projects currently in progress include the North European Gas pipeline. Work on the pipeline began a few years in response to Europe’s unquenchable thirst for gas. The NEGP will run under the waters of the Baltic Sea from Portovaya bay (near Vyborg) to the coast of Germany (near Greifswald).

Chairman: Alexey Borisovich Miller

Following graduation from the Leningrad Finance and Economics Institute Alexey Borisovich Miller worked as an engineer-economist in the general planning division of the Leningrad research institute of civil construction, “LenNIIProekt”. Miller has been chairman of Gazprom since 2001.

TNK–BP

Operating primarily in the in the western half of Russia, the vertically integrated oil company was established in 2003. The company is 50 percent owned by BP and 50 percent by a group of prominent Russian investors: Alfa Group, Access Industries and Renova (AAR). Headquartered in Moscow, the company employs almost 100,000 people and operates in nearly all of Russia’s major hydrocarbon regions. In 2004, average crude oil production totalled 1.44 million barrels per day (bpd), or 72 million tons per year. Current oil production is roughly 1.5 million bpd. The companies major producing assets are located in West Siberia, the Volga-Urals and East Siberia.TNK-BP owns and operates five refineries (four in Russia and one in Ukraine) and has a retail network of more than 2,000 sites spread across Central Russia and Ukraine, with a particularly strong position in the Moscow market.

President and CEO: Robert Dudley

Before his current appointment, Mr. Dudley served as an Executive Assistant to the BP Group Chief Executive Officer, Lord Browne. Subsequently, he was Group Vice President for BP's Renewables and Alternative energy activities within the Gas, Power & Renewables stream for BP in London, with responsibilities for BP's global solar business, and wind and hydrogen activities. Before joining TNK-BP, he served as Group Vice President responsible for BP's upstream businesses in Angola, Egypt, Russia, the Caspian Region and Algeria.

Sibneft

A vertically integrated oil company whose interests lie in petroleum exploration, production, refining, and marketing. Sibneft has proved reserves in excess of 4.5 billion barrels of oil. Geological exploration has been carried out in the Noyabrsk area of Western Siberia since 1968. By 2004, more than 1400 exploration wells descending a total of 4.15 million meters had been drilled in the area.

President: Alexander Ryazanov

Alexander Ryazanov is a 1979 graduate of the prestigious I.M. Gubkin Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas and received a further degree from the All-Union Finance and Economics Correspondence Institute in 1993. He served as a member of the State Duma in 2000-2001 and chaired the State Duma Committee for Parliamentary Property. He has worked as deputy chief executive of Gazprom since 2001 and was appointed president of Sibneft in December 2005.