Relatively low oil revenues in both Russia and Venezuela may also hamper their plans to build complex and expensive oil projects in southern Venezuela.
Founded in Texas, in 1919, by two brothers, George and Herman Brown, and their brother-in-law, Dan Root, the firm grew from supervising small road-paving projects to building enormously complex oil platforms, dams, and Navy warships.
The disaster at BP's well in the Gulf of Mexico may increase costs as regulations are tightened.And although the national oil companies have mostly excluded the majors from their oil projects, foreign expertise and capital is needed for complex natural-gas projects.
In Canada, heavy oil projects have been put on hold.
In the panic after the crash in oil prices in 2008, companies quickly scrapped oil projects around the world.
Oil projects look increasingly pricey and risky and they will always depend on a volatile oil market.
Spending of $1.3tn on new oil projects and $124bn on existing projects is unneeded, it concluded.
Many oil projects will be outright abandoned.
If electric vehicles take off and oil prices plunge, high-cost oil projects could become worthless.
