Research Articles
Lifting the price
The decoupling of oil and gas prices that’s occurring in the mature US markef heralds a progressive gas price decoupling from oil throughout the world. However, outside North America the world has been slow to adapt to this change. Here, Ruud Weijermars and Crispian McCredie, Alboran Energy Strategy Consultants, look at the worldwide pace of decoupling and its implications for future gas pricing. (more…)
Guidelines for clockspeed acceleration in the US natural gas transmission industry
This study presents the clockspeed analysis of a peer group comprising six major integrated US energy companies with substantial US interstate natural gas pipeline business activities: El Paso, Williams, NiSource, Kinder Morgan, MidAmerican and CMS Energy. For this peer group, the three clockspeed accelerators have been benchmarked at both corporate level and gas transmission business level, using time-series analysis and cross-sectional analysis over a 6-year period (2002–2007). (more…)
Critical Drivers of Exploration and Production Clockspeed
The performance of oil and gas companies takes place in a highly competitive market where everything is related to timing. In a bull market, companies that respond the fastest to internal and external signals of growth opportunities can take measures to further accelerate their growth. In a recessional market, companies can prevent overly steep deceleration of their business size by taking adequate action to adjust the company to the changed outlook without undue delay. Response time and timely measures are crucial for best-in-class performance, which is the result of supreme clockspeed management. Individual companies can perform better than others by monitoring the critical settings of their clockspeed and by rapidly synchronising their accelerators with the business environment when appropriate. In this article, the critical drivers of exploration and production (E&P) clockspeed and specific actions for clockspeed synchronisation and optimisation at individual companies are outlined.
(more…)CLOSING COMMUNICATION GAPS CAN IMPROVE THE SUCCESS OF OIL & GAS VENTURES
For nearly a century, National Oil Companies (NOCs) and International Oil Companies (IOCs) have jointly executed the challenging task to match the global energy supply and demand schedules. Increasingly, IOCs struggle for access to reserves, controlled by NOCs, as follows from an inventory of the regional spread of reserves. The global increase in energy demand and unequal access to reserves has an important consequence: negotiations and relation management involve mutual stakes higher than ever before. This situation implicates that even the smallest flaw in effective communication between stakeholders (professionals, companies and governments) may result in an adverse impact on the outcome of the business cooperation – causing loss of business value. Communication between people in the international Oil & Gas business involves professionals that are naturally endowed with not only a range of human emotions but they also come from a diversity of cultures. The impact of cultural diversity on business efficiency is certainly not new to the Oil & Gas business, but still intensifies due to globalization. Nonetheless, the interaction between social groups and proper management of human emotions is often neglected in an industry already dominated by formidable technical challenges that require stout determination to overcome.
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