Big Oil Faces Pressure From Shareholders Over Costs

The top five have all badly underperformed the global MSCI World index this year, which is up 20.6 percent for the year to date, even with share buybacks already under way.

The weakest performers are Exxon, whose shares have managed just a 2.6 percent rise, and Shell, down 5.8 percent.

Doug Leggate of Bank of America Merrill Lynch said on Exxon's results call that its "share price has frankly been pretty awful."

David Rosenthal, Exxon's vice president of investor relations, responded by saying, "we are executing on the things that we can control."

Spurred on by historically high oil prices in the past few years, integrated oil companies have increased exploration work in areas once deemed too risky.

France's Total, which embarked on a so-called high-risk, high-reward exploration strategy to find massive fields in areas such as the southern African seas, conceded last month it would start what CEO Christophe de Margerie called a "soft landing" in capital expenditure.

Total said it would pay a quarterly dividend of 0.59 euro per share, unchanged from the previous quarter.


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