Big Oil keeps brakes on spending even with crude rally windfall

LONDON: Leading international energy companies are resisting the temptation to rush and spend an unexpected windfall from rallying oil and natural gas prices as they focus on longer-term energy transition challenges, executives and analysts said.

Benchmark crude oil prices more than doubled in the second quarter of 2021 from a year earlier and have risen further in recent weeks to close to $78 a barrel, their highest in almost three years as OPEC and other major producers failed to strike an agreement to lift output.