Casey Sattler

A familiar caveat in financial markets is that past performance is no guarantee of future results. This now seems to be just as true for forecasts of global oil production. Forecasting, of course, is inherently difficult, but the oil industry has historically been able to rally around a general consensus view of where supply and demand are headed and invest accordingly. Now, a new set of variables rules oil markets, injecting levels of uncertainty that defy past experiences.

The integrated majors' struggles to keep investors happy are hardly new, but they need to put forward a more compelling investment case. After all, the majors aren't simply competing against each other for dollars. They're vying for institutional money that could go to any large industrial sector offering solid returns and stable dividends. So how is Big Oil planning to stay relevant?

Exxon Mobil has long been in a league of its own. The fourth-largest firm in the latest annual Fortune 500 list of US corporations had revenues in 2016 -- a relatively weak year for oil prices -- that would have placed it 45th, between Bangladesh and Portugal, in the ranking of countries by GDP. Its celebrated management focus on discipline and efficiency is a real-world manifestation of business school textbook best practices.