Deepwater struggles to make its case

The oil price recovery has not yet translated into a rush of cash into challenging offshore environments

The world's largest listed oil and gas firms are continuing to stress their financial discipline, continuing to shower their more buoyant cashflows onto shareholders through dividends and buy-backs, continuing to boost acreage in the US shale basins and continuing to invest in renewable technologies. What they are not rushing to do, though, is to make a splurge of investments in offshore deepwater projects, despite a consensus view that the global oil market needs investment in new barrels to avoid a supply shock sometime before the middle of the next decade. At Gulfquest's MCE deepwater development (MCEDD) conference in London in April, a panel of respected industry watchers tried to make s