I've noticed that in many fields, innovation mainly comes from new companies. It often seems as if old companies are too entrenched in the status quo to want new things to come about (an example would be Kodak who was very late to the digital party, despite being the first to invent it).
However, big oil doesn't seem to suffer that problem. I often read about new technologies being developed to get more oil from more places, or about how they are investing in other fuel types. I wondered what the reason was, then realized there's a big fundamental difference between oil companies and manufacturing companies: Oil will run out.
Every time a new oil platform is built, they know there's a limited amount of oil to be retrieved. So big oil has to constantly be on the lookout for new technologies to get more, and if that ever fails, new products to sell when the oil starts running low.
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