Oil and natural gas accounted for 55 percent of global energy use in 2022.1 It will come as no surprise that companies that own oil and natural gas resources and sell their associated fuels are extremely valuable. Market capitalization or “market cap” is one way to measure the value of a company. Market cap is equal to the current price of one company share multiplied by the number of outstanding shares. If the price of one share of a company is worth $5 and 1,000,000 shares have been issued, then the market cap of the company is $5 million.
The world’s 350 largest oil and gas companies had a market cap of about $7.2 trillion in November 2023. That represents about 7% of the market cap of the world’s 8,000 largest companies.2 Many of the most valuable energy companies are a state-owned enterprise (SOE): a business enterprise in the government or state has significant control. About 90 percent of the world’s reserves of crude oil are held by SOEs. Examples include the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco), Rosneft (Russia), the National Iranian Oil Company, the China National Petroleum Corporation, and Petróleos de Venezuela.
Some SOEs have a public component that enables them to be valued by their market cap. The government of Saudi Arabia allows just under 2% of the value of Saudi Aramco to be held by outside investors. It now has a market cap of about $2 trillion, making it the world’s third most valuable company after Microsoft and Apple. Similarly, the Russian government allows just under half of the value of Gazprom, a natural gas company, to be held by institutional and private investors. Other SOEs have no public component such as the National Iranian Oil Company and Petróleos de Venezuela, so the market cap numbers do not tell the full story of the economic and financial value of the world’s oil and gas companies.
The value of oil and gas companies is highly concentrated in a small number of firms. Just eight companies hold 50% of the market cap of the 350 largest companies: Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, PetroChina, TotalEnergies, ConocoPhillips, and Petrobas. The 83 largest firms hold 90% of total value. The market cap of oil and gas companies also exhibits distinct geographic concentration. The 12 companies in the Middle East and North Africa region are more valuable than the companies in Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, Latin America, Caribbean, and Pacific regions combined.
1 Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2023, https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
2 CompaniesMarketCap , “Largest oil and gas companies by market cap,” accessed November 23, 2023, Link
