“Overall the idea that we have to go into the Arctic to find new resources I think has been dispelled by the enormous cheap, easier to produce and quicker time-to-market resources in the Permian onshore US.  We think there is almost no rationale for Arctic exploration.  Immensely complex, expensive projects like the Arctic we think can move too high on the cost curve to be economically doable.”

Michele Della Vigna, commodity equity business unit leader in EMEA at Goldman Sachs