Petroleum Business Review (PBR)

Companies have access to a variety of financial resources to implement available profitable investment projects, to settle overdue debts, to increase working capital, and to pay dividends to shareholders. These resources include cash from operating activities and the sale of assets (as intra-organizational sources of financing), borrowing loans from the bank, issuance of bonds, and issuance of new shares (as outside the organization sources of financing). Financing and its effects on the returns and risk of the company choose sources that minimize financing costs. Then, to prioritize the parameters, the hierarchical method, Topsis, and ANP were used. The results of this study indicated that the factors of efficiency, cost, sustainability, being operational, fairness, and transparency have been the most important criteria for choosing the financing method, as well as forming sub-consortia, receiving facilities, issuing participation bonds, establishing investment companies, presence in the securities market, creating a shareholder plan, and finally attracting foreign capital have been identified as financing methods. Also, the transparency of the financing method in the surveyed companies to identify the appropriate financing method had the least importance.

One of the governmental research organizations is Research and Technology Organization (RTO), whose primary is to harness science and technology in the service of innovation or public bodies and industry, to improve the quality of life and build economic competitiveness. Despite the importance and role of research and technology organizations in the innovation system, previous studies have not addressed the concept of technology development projects' effectiveness implemented in RTOs. This study attempts to investigate this concept from two aspects: "the concept of effectiveness in research projects" and "the concept of effectiveness in RTOs" to define this concept in a research and technology organization (RIPI). To evaluate and implement the proposed framework, eight technology development projects are studied at the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry. Based on the developed indicators and their weights, the effectiveness of eight technology development projects has been evaluated using ARAS, COPRAS, MOORA, and TOPSIS multi-criteria decision-making methods.

Blockchain technology can bring opportunities, such as reducing transaction business costs and increasing transparency to the oil and gas industry. This model is adopted as a public maturity model in business processes, industry, and IS/IT organizations. This model is classified into five levels of emerging, identified, defined, operational, and mature to identify the applications of this technology toward flourishing and providing the ultimate solution to most of the organization's problems. Therefore, this qualitative research has been designed to identify maturity levels to provide a conceptual model of maturity levels of blockchain technology in grounded theory. First, the initial factors extracted through reviewing the research background; then, by conducting semi-structured interviews with 12 blockchain technology experts, the data were collected. It is noted that the interview was stopped as the duplicated and identical data, based on grounded theory research strategy The meanings and characteristics of the blockchain maturity model challenges presented in three stages of coding. The reliability of the interviews has confirmed by the reliability methods of Test-Retest and intra-subject agreement. The results of data analysis indicate that experts at the emerging level to primary educating and technology monitoring, at the identified level, to recognize the applications of this technology and regulation, at the defined level, to develop a roadmap, proof of concept, and Feasibility, At the operational level, the stakeholder resistance, and at the matured level, the entry new members, the consortium, and increasing attention to maturity requirements, is a spotlight with more frequency than other indicators and elements.

The overall objective of this article is to analyze critically the legal instruments that regulate decommissioning of onshore and offshore platforms in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry vis-à-vis other jurisdictions such as USA, UK, and South Africa with a view to making requisite recommendations for improvement in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry. These recommendations are made against the backdrop of Nigeria’s experience of militancy in the Niger Delta Region between 1999 to 2015 which were necessitated by the complacency and poor or no Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mechanisms of the multi-national companies in the Region and weak oil and gas legislations in Nigeria. It is palpable that the militancy was engendered by political, religious, ethnic, and more importantly, economic reasons. The economic reason was anchored on 5 decades of irredeemable ecological devastation of the region by the oil companies exploration and exploitation activities. To this end, this work recommends that a comprehensive legal framework on decommissioning is urgently required to be enacted due to the fact that the 170 petroleum platforms in the Niger Delta Region are nearing their useful lifetime.

One of the requirements for the formation of stability in regions and sub-regions is the creation of regional security complexes. The necessity of creation these regional security complexes is the existence of security orders which are outcomes of regional actors’ agreements to control internal crisis and challenges and to manage the level of external interventions in regional affairs. Due to its geopolitical, geo-strategic and geo-economic importance, especially in the oil field, the West Asian region has a great impact on the international security of the oil market, and the formation of an endogenous regional security complex can provide the necessary basis for oil security. The strengthening and expansion of the Axis of Resistance strategy under Islamic Republic of Iran leadership in formation a regional security complex could ensure oil security, as much as possible. This article studies the central impact of the Axis of Resistance strategies, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran in ensuring oil security through the formation of regional security complex. Countering unilateralism in oil market management, countering US-managed chaos to gain new customers in the oil market, and countering oil conversion as a financial source for international terrorism are some of the strategies of the Axis of Resistance and the Islamic Republic of Iran in this regard.  

One of the main approaches in capacity building and strengthening organizational abilities to integrate activities along the supply chains is the integration, creation, and reconfiguration of internal and external capabilities of components based on the theory of dynamic capabilities. The main assumptions of this theory are based on the purposeful strengthening and promotion of organizational capacities to improve the executive capability of human resources. The objective of this study is to provide a model for promoting dynamic capabilities for international markets of Iran's oil and gas industry. The statistical population includes managers and experts in the field of oil and gas working in the affiliated organizations in Iran. Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire whose validity was verified by the content method and its reliability was examined and verified by test-retest method with Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.877 and internal consistency was verified using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Based on the findings, the dynamic capabilities model was formed on 24 primary factors that were classified into 7 main components. In addition, these components were further classified into four main categories based on the competence-emergency matrix. According to the results, "Strategic conducting of capital resources" accounted for 19.78% of explanatory power and was the most important factor in promoting dynamic capabilities. The findings of the present study can be useful for decision-makers to promote competitiveness in terms of dynamic capabilities in Iran's oil and gas industry.