Production Sharing Contracts: Factors Influencing Petroleum Joint Ventures Performance

Production sharing contracts (PSC) are a pervasive fact of economic life in developing countries. They involve a government-contractor relationship with the aim of exploring, developing and producing oil within a Joint Venture environment. This public-private partnership form of collaboration often entails conflict in managing the Joint Venture because of the different strategic objectives between its partners. The rights of the host government and the obligations of the foreign contractor are central in a PSC. This proposes numerous complexities and dilemmas in managing the Joint Venture. Joint Ventures although being an increasingly common direction of corporate strategy over the past two decades have accentuated the problem of measuring the business performance. Joint Ventures performance determinants are problematic in the sense that both parties find it difficult to distinguish between bad luck and poor performance. The major difficulty in managing the performance of a Joint Venture lies in the confusion of how to identify and measure the performance. The controversy often stems from the lack of clarity of what a determinant of performance is. The development of key performance factors and indicators receives a considerable attention as being a powerful management tool. This study will present a conceptual framework of the performance management determinants of non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures under a PSC contractual agreement. The proposed conceptual framework will contribute to the academic knowledge in managing non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures, as well as the contribution to management practitioners in managing oil business within the oil production sharing contract system

Oil Business Joint Ventures Performance Management Determinants – Towards a Conceptual Framework

Production sharing contracts (PSC) are a pervasive fact of economic life in developing countries. They involve a government-contractor relationship with the aim of exploring, developing and producing oil within a Joint Venture environment. This public-private partnership form of collaboration often entails conflict in managing the Joint Venture because of the different strategic objectives between its partners. The rights of the host government and the obligations on the foreign contractor are central in a PSC. This proposes numerous complexities and dilemmas in managing the Joint Venture. Joint Ventures although being an increasingly common direction of corporate strategy over the past two decades, have accentuated the problem of measuring the business performance. Joint Ventures performance determinants are problematic in the sense that both parties find it difficult to distinguish between bad luck and poor performance. The major difficulty in managing the performance of a Joint Venture lies in the confusion of how to identify and measure the performance. The controversy often stems from the lack of clarity of what a determinant of performance is. The development of key performance factors and indicators receives a considerable attention as being a powerful management tool. This study will present a conceptual framework of the performance management determinants of non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures under a PSC contractual agreement. The proposed conceptual framework will contribute to the academic knowledge in managing non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures, as well as the contribution to management practitioners in managing oil business within the oil production sharing contract system

Five countries in the eastern Mediterranean are shaking up Europe’s energy map

Discoveries of natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean Sea around Egypt, Cyprus, Israel and Greece are shaking up Europe’s energy politics. Traditionally, Russia has been Europe’s main supplier of gas, giving it significant influence over Europe. But this influence is under threat from various gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean and a tussle is taking place to control the region’s resources

Production Sharing Contracts: Factors Influencing Petroleum Joint Ventures Performance

Production sharing contracts (PSC) are a pervasive fact of economic life in developing countries. They involve a government-contractor relationship with the aim of exploring, developing and producing oil within a Joint Venture environment. This public-private partnership form of collaboration often entails conflict in managing the Joint Venture because of the different strategic objectives between its partners. The rights of the host government and the obligations of the foreign contractor are central in a PSC. This proposes numerous complexities and dilemmas in managing the Joint Venture. Joint Ventures although being an increasingly common direction of corporate strategy over the past two decades have accentuated the problem of measuring the business performance. Joint Ventures performance determinants are problematic in the sense that both parties find it difficult to distinguish between bad luck and poor performance. The major difficulty in managing the performance of a Joint Venture lies in the confusion of how to identify and measure the performance. The controversy often stems from the lack of clarity of what a determinant of performance is. The development of key performance factors and indicators receives a considerable attention as being a powerful management tool. This study will present a conceptual framework of the performance management determinants of non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures under a PSC contractual agreement. The proposed conceptual framework will contribute to the academic knowledge in managing non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures, as well as the contribution to management practitioners in managing oil business within the oil production sharing contract system

Qualitative research methodology: a neo-empiricist perspective

A commitment to empiricism is evident in much of the published research, in the business and management field, which extols the virtues of ‘qualitative research’ approaches. Yet just what their implicit assumptions to empiricism suggest in terms of the epistemological positioning of the research often remains problematic. It is our position that management researchers need to be more aware of the philosophical commitments they make through their methodological choices if they are to understand what they are investigating. In this paper we argue for the importance of neo-empiricism as a distinct interpretivist mode of engagement with qualitative methods and its position as a response to the criticisms of positivism with respect to developing meaningful understandings of social phenomena is discussed. With the focus of neo-empiricism on developing theory that is grounded in observations of empirical reality, we offer two examples, from Forensic Accounting and International Joint Venture Management, to highlight the general inductive data (thematic) analysis processes associated with such data oriented empirical perspectives. The main focus of the paper is to ‘forefront’ the role of the neo-empiricist perspective as an important interpretive approach in business and management research and to provide a basic understanding of the theoretical commitments of such perspective

Oil Business Joint Ventures Performance Management Determinants – Towards a Conceptual Framework

Production sharing contracts (PSC) are a pervasive fact of economic life in developing countries. They involve a government-contractor relationship with the aim of exploring, developing and producing oil within a Joint Venture environment. This public-private partnership form of collaboration often entails conflict in managing the Joint Venture because of the different strategic objectives between its partners. The rights of the host government and the obligations on the foreign contractor are central in a PSC. This proposes numerous complexities and dilemmas in managing the Joint Venture. Joint Ventures although being an increasingly common direction of corporate strategy over the past two decades have accentuated the problem of measuring business performance. Joint Ventures performance determinants are problematic in the sense that both parties find it difficult to distinguish between bad luck and poor performance. The major difficulty in managing the performance of a Joint Venture lies in the confusion of how to identify and measure the performance. The controversy often stems from the lack of clarity of what a determinant of performance is. The development of key performance factors and indicators receives considerable attention as being a powerful management tool. This study will present a conceptual framework of the performance management determinants of non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures under a PSC contractual agreement. The proposed conceptual framework will contribute to the academic knowledge in managing non-equity petroleum Joint Ventures, as well as the contribution to management practitioners in managing oil business within the oil production sharing contract system

Factors Influencing Performance Management of Non-Equity Joint Ventures in the Oil Sector

The main aim of this thesis is to identify the factors influencing performance management of petroleum joint ventures in Egypt. As such, the purpose is to explain how an operating joint venture, in the petroleum industry in Egypt, can be managed to enhance its performance. The findings of the thesis aim to suggest a practical model that incorporates the factors that influence the performance of the Egyptian petroleum joint ventures from the perspective of the partners. This study explores the dyadic partnership, in Egyptian petroleum joint ventures, between the government of the host country and the investor. A qualitative inductive approach was used to gather empirical data through in-depth semi-structured interviews with Senior Executives in this field of business. A purposive sampling technique and a thematic analytical procedure were used for data collection and analysis respectively. The thematic analytical procedure was implemented using the template analysis style. The analysis of the data produced eight overarching themes which represent the factors influencing performance management of petroleum joint ventures in Egypt. These eight themes were grouped into three main perspectives: The Managerial Perspective, The Operational Perspective, and The Organisational Perspective. The main output from the present research is a practice-based model of the factors influencing the performance of petroleum joint ventures in the Egyptian context. The model is developed to embrace the internal and external environments of the joint venture. Additionally, the model includes elements which can help executive managers and business practitioners in the petroleum sector to review and monitor the performance of their joint ventures to ensure an effective management of the partnership. Overall, the research contributes to academic knowledge in the field of joint ventures' performance, and international business, by adding the context of the petroleum joint ventures in Egypt

Performance Management Factors in the Petroleum Contractual Business

Production sharing contracts (PSC) are a pervasive fact of economic life in developing countries. They involve a government-contractor relationship with the aim of exploring, developing and producing oil within a Joint Venture environment. This public-private partnership form of collaboration often entails conflict in managing the Joint Venture because of the different strategic objectives between its partners. The rights of the host government and the obligations of the foreign contractor are central in a PSC. This proposes numerous complexities and dilemmas in managing the Joint Venture. Joint Ventures although being an increasingly common direction of corporate strategy over the past two decades have accentuated the problem of measuring the business performance. Joint Ventures performance determinants are problematic in the sense that both parties find it difficult to distinguish between bad luck and poor performance. The major difficulty in managing the performance of a Joint Venture lies in the confusion of how to identify and measure the performance. The controversy often stems from the lack of clarity of what a determinant of performance is. The development of key performance factors and indicators receives a considerable attention as being a powerful management tool. This study will present a conceptual framework of the performance management determinants of non-equity Petroleum Joint Ventures under a PSC contractual agreement. The proposed conceptual framework will contribute to the academic knowledge in managing non-equity Petroleum Joint Ventures, as well as the contribution to management practitioners in managing oil business within the oil production sharing contract system

Five countries in the eastern Mediterranean are shaking up Europe’s energy map

Discoveries of natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean Sea around Egypt, Cyprus, Israel and Greece are shaking up Europe’s energy politics. Traditionally, Russia has been Europe’s main supplier of gas, giving it significant influence over Europe. But this influence is under threat from various gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean and a tussle is taking place to control the region’s resources