Vertical integration has traditionally always been the most adopted strategy for the biggest companies in the oil industry, aiming to capture extraordinary profits along the oil supply chain. Several are the reasons for vertical integration, such as the reduction of transaction costs, price discrimination, increased marketpower and creation of barriers to entry of new competitors. However, two major american oil companies decided for the disintegration of their activities, Marathonin 2010 and Conoco in 2011, creating, each, two independent companies, one for the upstream business and another for the downstream business. This brings into question whether vertical integration is still the most efficient strategy for thisindustry. Several analysts began to explain which would be the reasons and advantages in favor of disintegration, and how other leading oil companies wouldbehave in the future. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the main reasons that lead companies to integrate, using a model with data from 339 companies in 48 countries to check if the integration would still be the best option for companies in the oil industry. This work is inspired by the study of Barrera-Rey (1995) with some modifications. While not having the desired statistical robustness, the results indicate that integration is no longer the best option, although that decision would have a more individual character to each company than a solution to the industry as a whole.