askarim/Shutterstock Save for later Print Download Share LinkedIn Twitter Blessed with vast oil and gas reserves, national oil companies (NOCs) have long ruled the upper echelon of Energy Intelligence’s rankings of the world’s Top 50 companies. But NOCs look primed to further expand their dominance in coming years as they invest more aggressively in oil and gas projects while publicly traded international oil companies (IOCs) retrench in response to investors’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns. Beholden to shareholder demands for higher cash returns and lower carbon emissions, Western majors appear to have nowhere to go but down in future rankings after significant upward moves earlier this century following the megamerger era of the late 1990s and early 2000s. State control means that NOCs face less ESG heat and can operate more freely with their capital.
