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This paper uses the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm to analyse the performance of the major European oil and gas companies between 2000 and 2008. This period covers a relatively stable era in the oil and gas industry, just after the intense merger activities and consolidations in the industry in the late 1990s and just before the collapse of oil prices at the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008. This study uses comparative research methodology and data from the Energy Intelligence database to analyse the performance of the major European oil and gas companies in the context of both property and knowledge-based resources. New arguments put forward include the view that these oil and gas companies should focus on developing their knowledge-based resources, both knowledge creation and knowledge application, in order to maintain and improve competitiveness in the long run.

In this paper we present an empirical study to verify the assertion of a negative impact of economic growth on carbon efficiency using a cross country analysis. More precisely we are concerned with the relation between past growth and CO 2 emissions, assuming that rapid growth in the past may explain lower carbon efficiency today. The central idea tested is that hasty growth is likely to slow down the improvement of energy and carbon efficiency. In other words, using an ordinary least square multifactor model to explain carbon intensity, we verify that the coefficient for an exogenous variable measuring the average past growth rate (apgr) for each country in our sample, is significantly positive.