Five Cases in Creating and Destroying Value

Case studies are most useful when they recover the decisions and uncertainties behind an outcome. In energy the outcome often arrives decades after the decision: a reactor bought cheaply in 1999 is repriced in 2024, a field found in 2006 is still being developed in 2026, and an offshore contract signed when money was cheap is cancelled when it is not. The task is to separate what decision-makers could have known from what happened later.

The five cases below were chosen to test all four factors of the power equation, to balance value created against value captured or destroyed, and to span the chain from wellhead to reactor. Constellation Energy shows an asset whose engineering never changed while its value moved from near zero to tens of billions. EOG Resources shows what a spending rule can do in a business whose price nobody sets. Ørsted shows a company that created an industry and then lost much of its shareholders' money in it. Saudi Aramco shows the lowest-cost supply on earth and how little of its value a minority shareholder owns. Petrobras shows world-class rock run by a company whose controlling shareholder has other goals. Figures come from the research companion, which records their sources and confidence. Interpretations are analytical judgments, not claims that one decision caused an outcome.