This seems a poisonous atmosphere in which to announce a big oil takeover. Yet that is precisely what America's Chevron did this week in revealing plans to gobble up its compatriot Texaco, in a deal worth more than $35 billion. The combination, if approved, will create the world's fifth biggest oil firm. Consumer-rights advocates are crying foul, and the Gore camp responds: "Given the fact that oil companies saw their profits rise by over 300 per cent in the past year, it raises the question whether big oil is getting too big." Is this deal really so worrying? The answer is no. For a start, this week's deal is merely part of a broader trend toward consolidation in the oil industry.

Another reason not to take alarmists seriously is that the only legitimate question that should concern regulators - are consumers harmed by the deal? - is straightforward to assess and, if necessary, to remedy. That is because the downstream bits of the oil business that most affect consumers are relatively transparent. What is more, the painfully low margins typical of this end of the oil business are evidence of the intense and increasing competition that keeps abuses in check.

The most compelling reason not to worry is the competition in the wild world of oil and gas exploration. Petroleum is probably the only global business in which the industry's largest firms and best assets are controlled by governments. Even the likes of Chevron and Texaco are midgets compared with the state-run oil giants like Saudi Arabia's Aramco, which alone produces a fifth of the world's oil exports. The industry's best, lowest-cost reserves are also controlled by governments. This leaves the private sector to fight ferociously over those oil and gas fields still left to be discovered; even here, once-sleepy state firms from Brazil, China and elsewhere are now competing with them for exploration rights. It is this frenzied hunt for the next big bonanza that is really behind recent mergers.

The emergence of "super-majors" in the private sector may even be good news for consumers. That is because it will help check the power of the true threat to consumer welfare: OPEC. There is surely more oil in the world, hidden away in Siberia and at the bottom of the deep blue sea. Finding and exploiting it increasingly takes the sort of money, fancy technology and, crucially, the appetite for risk that only the biggest firms can afford.

This editorial in The Economist has been edited for space.