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The Scotian Shelf basin lies off the coast of eastern Canada and incorporates a shallow-water shelf and deepwater slope that extend from Nova Scotia waters into Newfoundland jurisdiction. Several gas and gas-condensate discoveries were made on the shelf from the 1970s to late 1990s. Exploration in the deepwater sector has been sporadic, and a 2002-2004 campaign in Nova Scotia, plus a 2010 well in Newfoundland, met with disappointment. A successful 2012 licensing round revived hopes for this under-explored basin, and in late-2015, Shell spudded the highly-anticipated Cheshire-1 exploration well, to be immediately followed by a second well. BP announced plans to drill its block in 2017. The Majors are hoping to make giant oil discoveries in this under-explored sector.

The US Independents have been successful at controlling costs and deleveraging. But the market continues to incentivise aggressive production growth. Operators who have guided for high-growth targets have delivered better share price growth compared with their growth-challenged peers. The task ahead will be to balance growth delivery with capital discipline and manage project-specific risks, especially in tight oil. We review the performance and outlook for the US Independents peer group using the Corporate Benchmarking Tool (CBT). Companies included in the report are: Anadarko, Apache, Chesapeake, ConocoPhillips, Continental, Devon, Encana, EOG, Hess, Marathon Oil, Murphy Oil, Newfield, Noble Energy, Occidental, Pioneer, Range and Southwestern.

An aggressive investment-led strategy sets ExxonMobil apart from its peers. Spend will jump over 40% to 2021 to drive value growth from a portfolio that, in the company's own words, is in the best shape since the Mobil merger. The goal is to more than double earnings by 2025 and grow production by 1 million boe/d to 5 million boe/d. There will be further erosion of key financial metrics out to 2020 but will this bold blueprint leave peers trailing over the long-term?