👉 Background: Woodside and Santos are two Australian companies with similar backgrounds. They were both founded in 1954. They both specialise in oil and gas exploration and production.

👉 What happened: Now, Woodside and Santos are looking to merge into one giant, mega $80 billion behemoth. This would make it bigger than ANZ, Wesfarmers, Telstra, and Woolworths by market valuation. If this is successful, it would be the largest corporate deal in Australia for many years.

👉 What else: With many miners focusing on green energy transitions, it seems that those mining companies that are still focused on fossil fuels have two options:

• Transition to green energy
• Consolidate and become even bigger and stronger

What's the key learning?

💡With green energy in the spotlight, fewer oil and gas companies are looking to own more and more of the industry.

💡Companies are investing roughly 15% below pre-pandemic levels in the oil and gas industry. That leaves the global market undersupplied and it means that the major oil and gas companies are in a powerful position.

💡Just this year, we've seen ExxonMobil buy shale giant Pioneer for $60 billion USD, and Chevron pay $53 billion USD for Hess. So clearly, these companies believe that oil and gas will stick around for a while... despite the impact on the environment.