A Strategic Approach to Oil and Gas Exploration

Strategic change

• Super-major case study
• Strategy introduction
• Life cycles of organisations
• Exercise – “strategic health check”
• Oil industry landscape
• Exercise – review the competitive forces affecting the oil & gas industry
• Examples of strategic change

Participants will learn how corporations evolve as they develop and how to recognise where an individual organisation is in its life cycle. This leads to a discussion of the major parameters that need to be assessed in order to evaluate strategic opportunities (technical, economic and political). Exercises will illustrate how to recognise the need for a strategic approach in response to new business opportunities and/or threats. A review of some case studies will identify the key ingredients for winning strategies.

Strategic change (continued)

• Strategic reviews
• Creating a strategy
• What makes winning exploration strategies

Exploration life cycle

• Exploration value chain and basin analysis
• Introduction to exploration history analysis
• Exercise – understanding basin “creaming curves”
• Nova Scotia offshore play fairway analysis

Formal approaches to conducting strategic reviews and developing strategic options are discussed. Participants will learn how different types of oil organisations (NOCs, super-majors through to independents) assess their business contexts and develop strategic options that are appropriate to their capabilities and capacities.

The exploration life cycle is explained starting with identifying new country/basin opportunities and conducting thorough and robust play assessments. How companies assess the scale of opportunities and then rank these allowing for technical, economic and political risk is explained. The importance of an integrated approach to evaluation of these different types of risks is emphasised as well as its impact of how companies manage their portfolios to maximise success in a risked sense.

Exploration process

• Exploration workflow
• Portfolio management – managing exposure
• Exercise – portfolio analysis

Delivery of an exploration strategy requires effective management of studies and physical programmes. Generic workflows covering the exploration segments of the “Exploration Life Cycle” are presented and discussed. Participants will gain an overview knowledge of the activities needed to access a new opportunity through to the work required to define prospects and drilling locations.

A natural outcome of an exploration programme is acquisition of a variety of assets over time (exploration licenses in a variety of locations at various stages of exploitation). Managing such a portfolio of assets is a key part of an explorer’s role and here participants will gain knowledge of the approaches used to manage portfolios within the context of a company’s specific exploration strategy.

Delivering change, Organisation and performance

• Delivering strategic change (NOCs, super majors, majors and independents)
• Organisation (structure, quality assurance, HSE, Licence to operate)
• People development
• Technology
• Exercise – Assessing a company’s competitive position
• Monitoring and reviewing performance

Participants learn about the approaches to delivering strategic change and how they vary across different types of industry participants. The type and size of organisation has a major effect on how to approach implementation of a strategic plan, which will be illustrated with some case examples. The exercise will illustrate how a particular type of organisation develops and implements a new exploration strategy as an example of understanding how to develop a fit for purpose approach depending on a given organisational context.