oil and gas

Since a large number of the oil and gas projects are related to the supply chain, the selection of contractors and suppliers is very important. In projects, a contractor is obliged to supply the goods from suppliers and manufacturers approved by the clients, while most companies in Iran, including the company surveyed in this research, i.e. Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company (IOEC, do not have a scientific approach to this issue). The main objective of this research is providing a scientific and practical approach to ranking suppliers and contractors at IOEC and selecting the best ones. In order to achieve such an objective, an integrated model of Swing and TOPSIS methods with fuzzy approach has been designed and applied to a real case. The actual data used are obtained from the post-lay survey of the exports and infield pipelines of South Pars development phases 13, 14, and 22. <strong>Keywords</strong>: Supplier Selection, multi attribute decision making (MADM), Oil and Gas, IOEC, Swing, Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Fuzzy, Pipelines

Iran is one of the most important oil and gas producing countries in the world with 153.8 billion barrels of crude oil and 33.5 billion cubic meters of gas has 9.3% and 18% share of total oil and gas reservoirs, respectively. Rich hydrocarbon reservoirs along with a special geographical location are of the most important competitive advantages of Iran. The oil value chain has a special place in the social, economic structure and level of development of Iran. In policy-making, especially in global equations and in the long run, where uncertainty is an integral part it is necessary to pay attention to this area. As a strategic knowledge, futures studies can play an important role in mapping the future. In current study, the possible and plausible futures of Iran's fossil energies (oil and gas) in the 2035 horizon are presented in the form of four scenarios. In an environment where variables are dynamic and constantly changing and uncertainty is high, using scenario building methods is preferable for long-term horizons. In this study, 30 drivers with high uncertainty and impact on the future of Iranian oil and gas were produced. Using the cross impact analysis model and the balanced impact model, out of 41,472 possible scenarios, 10 scenarios with maximum compatibility were obtained, that presented in four scenarios namely: clean scenario (low carbon), a bipolar Middle East scenario, a cooperation and development scenario, and finally a postponed dream scenario.

Iran's Ministry of Petroleum due to empowerment of Iranian companies for executing local mega projects, regional and international markets penetration and upgrading national technology in petroleum upstream industry, predicted a competent Iranian partner called Exploration and Production (E&P) companies, for cooperating with the International Oil Company (IOC) in Article Four of the Cabinet Approval. Now considering the absence of IOCs, it seems that the capacity of other oil contract models to be used by Iranian oil companies should be examined. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of Concession agreements’ execution, by an E&P company in Iran’s upstream industry. The research method is descriptive and analytical and governing laws of Iran are reviewed in this study. Since the host government makes the final decision on the conduct of oil operations, it cannot be described as domination of oil resources, and therefore does not seriously contradict the Iran’s Constitution. Furthermore, E&P companies will not be subject to Article 81 of the Constitution. In the Oil Laws, the only restriction on the inflow of foreign capital in the upstream industry of Iran has been observed, which again does not apply to E&P companies. In the Laws of the Five-Year Plans, this restriction of oil laws has been adjusted too much in which it seems that the restriction has also been removed for IOCs. Finally, the investigation shows that there are no major legal barriers in applying Concession agreement in case that the operator is an Iranian E&P company.

Cell Formation Problem (CFP) is a famous issues in group technology, where an analyst aims at forming groups of machines/parts (so-called cells), in such a way that machines in every cell process as much as possible parts from this cell and as less as possible parts from other cells. In this article, a Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) is designed to solve the CFP. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, 35 sample classical problems are examined. The experimental results indicate desirable performance of the proposed algorithm. In addition, applicability of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by a real-world case in project human resource management. Since the megaprojects in oil industry require a wide range of jobs, thus grouping of individuals with considering their skills is an important challenge. The paper defines the job grouping problem as a CFP, and solve a real-world problem using the proposed HSA.