Here’s a jog at an M&A tactic: amateur psychology. A recent program on The Learning Channel was on “disposophobia.” Basically, this is hoarding. “It’s the fear of throwing anything away. These people aren’t just messy; oftentimes the clutter is the result of a deeper behavioral problem,” reads one promotion of the program, “Help, I’m a Hoarder.”

The subject of excessive accumulation could be Sharpies, newspapers, Styrofoam peanuts, print-outs of e-mails—or all of these and more. (Saving every issue of Oil and Gas Investor since its debut in 1981 does not qualify as dysfunctional hoarding, however, and instead has been known to promote better business health.)

The reliable Wikipedia describes disposophobia as pathological. “It involves the collection or failure to discard large numbers of objects, even when their storage causes significant clutter and impairment…Hoarding rubbish may be referred to as syllogomania.” The common term for the dysfunctional accumulator is packrat.

Hoarding can also be of oil and gas assets. This would be oilgasmania or pathological hydrocarbonphilia. Do the major oil producers suffer from disposophobia? And, what can they do about it?

At the web site Disposophobia.com (yes, really), “disaster master” Ron Alford writes that most clients don’t want the clutter cleared out, “yet some situation has forced their hand.”

So how to push ExxonMobil or BP or Royal Dutch Shell to lighten their load and let go of some onshore U.S. properties? Alford writes that a de-hoarding project “must be done with expedience as well as compassion.”

Independent producers can help. First, identify examples of unhealthy accumulation, particularly those that are detrimental to fire code or, in this case, the bottom line. Note: The small oil or gas asset may be a prized cash cow, but the key to victory here is to spin it as though it will eventually be the ruin of this multinational major producer.

Second, identify targets. Based on 2006 figures, BP Plc is the No. 1 holder of U.S. proved reserves—some 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent. ExxonMobil holds 4.3 billion; ConocoPhillips, 3.2 billion; and Chevron Corp., 2.6 billion. Together, these four producers alone hold 16.1 billion BOE, or 39% of the total 41.2 billion held by 122 U.S. reserve-holders reviewed by independent energy-research firm John S. Herold Inc. (This talent bank is now owned by an accumulator too: The firm was purchased in 2007 by IHS Inc., which took in another big brain trust, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, in 2006.)

So, four producers own 39% and 118 own 61%. The loneliness must be burdensome. The Big Four could let go of 90% of their U.S. holdings and have more comrades than just each other.

Yet, analysts with Fitch Ratings expect major oils to take in more oil and gas reserves in 2008, instead of divesting. In “Capital Markets” in this issue, the Fitch analysts report that other hoarding by the packrat majors—buybacks—has meant relatively less reinvestment in adding reserves, so they may need to go out and buy some to put some solid growth on their books.

Each other and large independent producers are their obvious targets. Analysts at Herold report in “NewsWell” in this issue, “We haven’t seen a mega-merger in nearly a decade. That’s a long time, by oil industry standards.”

The Fitch analysts add that also driving the majors to the brink of more accumulation are increased reserve-access and tax issues abroad, such as in Venezuela, Russia, Kazakhstan and even Canada.

And, there is another hurdle to independents’ success in their own accumulation goals. Another club of accumulators is fast in the works and is expected to become a formidable asset-market force. This group’s hoarding may be even more challenging to talk them down from than the major oils’ condition: Hoarding is actually key to this new group’s business model.

These are the upstream MLPs, which aim to take in long-life oil and gas reserves and hold onto them, producing them out over years and years and years.

So, how to shake more U.S. oil and gas assets free in the face of all this reluctance to let go? There are some old-fashioned methods: smoke, mirrors, snake oil, poker. Or, call the Disaster Master. Alford writes, “Our specialty is dealing with abnormal amounts of contents…We provide life-transition services for disposophobics across North America.”