英国石油为何无人问津

    是否有人愿意收购全球最大公司之一的英国石油公司（BP）？随着英国石油公司与美国政府就深水地平线（Deepwater Horizon）钻井平台漏油事故达成和解，业内一些人开始将其视为收购的新目标。尽管这类超大型公司合并会让华尔街银行家们垂涎，但是即便卖掉数十亿美元资产后，英国石油公司规模和风险仍然过大。当前石油领域主要发展方向还是专业化。英国石油公司只有拆分成若干可控的部分，其他石油巨擎才有可能愿意掏腰包。

    差不多每两年，这家是非不断的石油巨头就会成为坊间热议的收购热门。上一次是2011年1月，风传壳牌石油公司（Shell）意欲上演跨海“德比”，并购英国石油公司，打造出能与最大上市能源公司埃克森美孚公司（ExxonMobil）抗衡的新公司。再往前推两年，埃克森美孚公司曾对英国石油公司欣欣向荣的精炼业务产生兴趣。再往前两年，英国石油公司曾与壳牌石油公司商谈合并事宜。

    时光荏苒，世事轮回，上周不愿意透露姓名的消息人士（也可能是捕风捉影的英国银行家）告诉彭博新闻社（told Bloomberg News），英国石油可能又将成为被收购对象。这一次，英国石油公司赢得如此关注的原因何在？随着公司规模瘦身，及与美国和俄罗斯政府间的纠葛逐一化解，英国石油公司低迷的市值变得无别诱人。英国石油公司最近宣布与美国司法部达成和解，就墨西哥湾大面积漏油事故支付45亿美元罚款了结刑事指控。上个月，历经多年政府打压和寡头折腾之后，英国石油公司宣布出售其俄罗斯合资公司秋明英国石油公司（TNK-BP）股份，换取国有的俄罗斯石油公司（Rosneft）20%的股份和123亿美元的现金。

    并非所有人都看好英国石油的收购前景。“尽管事事皆有可能，但是英国石油公司规模过大，无法并购，”Oppenheimer的能源股票分析师法德尔·盖特指出。

    在休斯顿，能源领域的银行家和石油公司高管们对英国石油已经或将要成为被收购对象的传闻嗤之以鼻。至于彭博社消息中被点名为潜在并购方之一的埃克森美孚公司，公司内部人士对《财富》杂志（Fortune）透露，公司近来从未进行过任何有关英国石油公司的讨论。

    英国石油公司与其他大石油公司合并，这个主意是不是有些疯狂？一直到现在，“越大越好”仍然是石油界普遍接受的理念。上世纪90年代，随着超大型石油公司的诞生，这个理念发展到了极致。但真正推动90年代末石油界并购潮的还是绝望，当年油价一度跌至每桶10美元。

    近期数月，油价略显疲软，一直徘徊在90美元上下，但仍然远高于上世纪90年代末的水平。以目前的油价，石油公司完全可以在稳稳当当地全球各地打井采油，财源广进。

    It's one of the largest companies in the world. Could it really be a takeover target?

    Some in the industry see BP as fresh deal meat following the company's long-awaited settlement with U.S. authorities in connection with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But while such a mega-merger may make Wall Street bankers salivate, even after selling off billions of dollars in assets, BP simply remains too big and too risky to buy. Specialization is the name of the game these days in the oil patch. BP would need to break up into more manageable pieces before any oil major would consider opening its wallet.

    It seems like every two years or so there is talk that BP, arguably the most battered of the world's "Supermajor" oil companies, is the focus of deal chatter. The last time this happened was back in January of 2011, when Shell was rumored to be interested in buying up its cross-channel and cross-town rival, creating a company with enough heft to take on the likes of the world's largest publicly-traded energy company, ExxonMobil. Two years before that, it was ExxonMobil looking to buy up BP's fledgling refining business. And two years before that it was talk of a possible merger-of-equals with Shell.

    Like clockwork, unnamed sources (or chatty British bankers?), told Bloomberg News last week that BP may yet again be a takeover target. The reason BP is such a tasty morsel now? Its beat-up valuation just looks too irresistible now that the company has slimmed down and settled its differences with the U.S. and Russian governments.

    In the U.S., BP recently announced a $4.5 billion criminal settlement with the Justice Department concerning its negligence in the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And in Russia last month, after years of strong-arming by the government and corrupt Russian oligarchs, BP agreed to sell its turbulent Russian partnership, TNK-BP, for a 20% stake in Rosneft, the state-owned Russian oil company, and $12.3 billion in cash.

    But not everyone is buying the takeover talk. "Although anything is possible, BP is too big to merge," says Fadel Gheit, an energy equity analyst at Oppenheimer.

    Down in Houston, energy bankers and oil executives uniformly shuttered at the notion that BP is now, or could be soon, the subject of a takeover. Insiders at ExxonMobil, one of the companies that Bloomberg cited as a possible merger partner, told Fortune that there has been zero talk of doing any kind of deal with BP recently.

    But is it such a crazy idea to imagine BP one day merging with one of its Big Oil brothers? Up until recently, it was widely accepted that being bigger was the key to being a better oil company. That view was taken to its logical extreme in the late 1990s when the "Supermajor" oil company was born. But the impetus for the mergers of the late 1990s was sheer desperation, as oil prices had collapsed to as low as $10 a barrel.

    Today, oil prices, while soft in recent months at around $90 a barrel, are nowhere near the levels seen in the late 1990s. At current prices, oil companies can comfortably make a fat profit drilling pretty much anywhere on earth.