In order to prioritize exploration activities, oil and gas companies need to follow a framework. This important procedural envelope is critical to the success of any oil and gas venture. Decision makers need to consider a multitude of variables before they decide whether or not to pursue any petroleum project. Before a decision to drill a well can be made, some important questions need to be answered; some of these questions revolve around the need for assurance that a well will bring wealth to the organization or parties that drill it. A decision maker therefore has to start by asking whether a venture is worth pursuing from an economic perspective. The answer to this question forms the heart of petroleum investment; and supporting this process by building petroleum economic models is what this book is all about. This book offers a basic understanding of the methods required to build economic models for valuing upstream petroleum projects. The book offers an overview of the fundamentals of some of the major petroleum contracts, simple commercial concepts and how to use them for creating valuation models.

"Ninety percent of the world's oil reserves are entrusted to state-owned companies. Originally created as political instruments, these so-called national oil companies (NOCs) face new demands amid today's dwindling oil reserves and simmering social pressures. Increasingly, state-owned oil firms-particularly in the Middle East-are having to balance the political demands of their governments with the need to be commercially competitive. In this ground-breaking new volume, Valerie Marcel draws on unprecedented access to the politicians, engineers; and businessmen directing five Middle Eastern state oil companies to shed light on one of the most secretive segments of the international oil industry. The author tells the stories of Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the National Iranian Oil Co., Sonatrach of Algeria, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.-oil titans which together produce one quarter of the world's oil and hold half of the world's known oil and gas reserves. Dr. Marcel explains the complex bond between each state and its oil company, tracing the relationship's evolution from the politically charged days of foreign concessions to today's world of profit-driven decisionmaking. Drawn from over 120 interviews with company executives, middle managers, and oil-ministry officials, the author identifies a number of surprising new trends in these companies' strategy, and she paints a picture of their nascent sense of corporate identity. The book provides rare, up-to-date insight into how state-owned companies are striking a balance between their national mission and their commercial needs. The book also provides an insider's guide to these companies' unique culture. Executives and researchers in the region-both inside and outside the oil industry-will find it a valuable tool for understanding business in the Middle East. "

Many people in the world today believe Bush's war against Saddam Hussein is only about oil. Iraq has the second biggest petroleum reserves in the Middle East, and America's relations with its prime supplier Saudi Arabia have turned sour in the wake of 9/11. Invading Iraq, so many argue, is merely colonising an oil field. Oil has transformed the world and remains the most important resource of our age. It has made the wealth of millions of people - from Venezuela to Norway via the Persian Gulf - and holds their futures in its fortunes. The Middle East is the earth's greatest petroleum depot. It is also the most explosive region in the world today. Now more than ever, with the global economy under severe threat, oil is of prime geopolitical concern. Crude Power provides a comprehensive analysis both of the world's dependency on Middle Eastern oil, and of the very dangerous way politics and economics play themselves out in the oil game - as producers and consumers tug at each others' interests. It is a tug of war: Oystein Noreng explains what all concerned are fighting for. Placing OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) into its wider world context, he examines in detail how shifting oil prices affect everything from international trade balances to inflation rates. In the current political climate of the Middle East and Central Asia, with anti-Americanism and the threat of terrorism in such countries as Saudi Arabia running high, oil holds the future of the world economy as well as thousands of lives in its hands. Crude Power is an indispensable book for anyone concerned with the fate of the world today, and that most important of issues: the interplay of power and money in the Middle East and beyond.

The petroleum industry is among the most lucrative and most important in the world, and its impact within the realm of international politics is tremendous (although it can be overstated). Taking a well-balanced and objective approach to the complicated web of political and economic threads that make up the fabric of the oil industry, Falola and Genova introduce the most salient aspects in clear language, offering cogent and up-to-date information about the countries, companies, international organizations, and people who shape the contemporary history of the black gold.

The relationship of international politics and the global oil industry affects everyone but is understood by few. Taking a well-balanced and objective approach to deconstructing this intricate web for those unfamiliar with the industry, Falola and Genova introduce the major players in the field, offering cogent and up-to-date information about the countries, companies, organizations, and people who shape the contemporary history of oil. They break down the essentials, describing the discovery process, the different types of oil, and the various processes by which oil gets to the market. Then they provide a brief history of the major oil-producing countries, followed by a discussion of OPEC and international efforts to control the price and supply of oil. After setting the stage, they introduce the most salient political issues that are influenced by oil, namely environmental protection, human rights, and economic development. Finally, a look at each of seven major oil exporters--Iraq, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela--demonstrates that the black gold can be both a blessing and a curse for the countries that produce it.

Despite the need to learn how to exploit alternative energy sources before the oil runs out, we will continue to be dependent on oil for the foreseeable future. Today's oil demands are not only generated by such obvious activities as gassing up our cars or powering our aircraft, but also from the ubiquitous technological gadgets that have infiltrated our daily lives. From computer monitors to CDs, from cell phones to the petroleum-generated materials used in our shoes and sweaters, our reliance on oil continues to grow. Because price and supply are highly dependent on political events in distant countries, it is essential for American consumers to understand the intricacies of this complex subject. Falola and Genova demystify the industry and invite us to investigate more deeply this vital resource.

"The real story of global oil over the past twenty-five years is not about the spillover effects of Palestinians fighting Israelis, or terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Iraq's stormy relationship with Kuwait. It is not even about periodic small- and large-scale U.S. attacks on Iraq. Rather, the real story is about longer-term developments that have changed the international relations of the Middle East, politics at the global level, and world oil markets. These developments have increased oil stability." from the Introduction

Thirty years after OAPEC shattered world markets for oil, the Western world remains profoundly dependent on foreign, particularly Middle Eastern, sources of petroleum. U.S. political rhetoric is suffused with claims about the vulnerability caused by this dependence. Hence, many political analysts assume that a search for stability of petroleum supplies is an important element of contemporary American foreign policy.

Steve A. Yetiv argues that common assumptions about oil markets are wrong. Although prices remain volatile, Yetiv's account portrays a world market in petroleum products far more benign and predictable than the one to which we are accustomed. In Crude Awakenings, he identifies and analyzes real and potential threats to the global energy supply, including wars, revolutions, coups, dangerous alliances, oil embargoes, Islamic radicalism, and transnational terrorism. However, he also shows how some of these threats have been mitigated and how global oil security has been reinforced."

This work provides assessments and analyses of the future relationship of oil and gas to the world economy, and offers policy recommendations for the Gulf region. The position of the Gulf producers in the world-energy arena is no longer as secure and stable as it once was, the book argues, with oil production from non-OPEC countries competing aggressively with OPEC oil. Other factors, including conservation and environmental concerns and technological developments, are covered in detail.

Essays covering five case studies to gain an insight into the unique Latin American approach to petroleum resources and industries.

Economic Risk in Hydrocarbon Exploration provides a total framework for assessing the uncertainties associated with exploration risk from beginning to end. Numerous examples with accompanying microcomputer algorithms illustrate how to quantitatively approach economic risk. The text compares detailed assumptions and models of economic risk, and presents numerical examples throughout to facilitate hands-on calculations using popular spread-sheet packages on personal computers.
Key Features
* Covers economic risk from exploration through production models
* Brings methods to a level where all can be done on a PC
* Analyzes numerical examples from the real world
* Removes "mystery" from how economics is done
* Addresses assumptions in models and shows how they influence projections

A legend among oilmen, Tom Slick was an independent operator in the truest sense. His office was his buggy during his early days of wildcatting the Mid-Continent oil field around 1910. And even after great success brought him to posher surroundings in an Oklahoma City office suite, his style remained hands-on. His impromptu deals were often brokered on street corners and over the telephone in his typical laconic style. Well into the 1920s he was the last of a breed who had no stock holders or board members to answer to, and instead "worked out of his hip pocket." Slick's extraordinary rise paralleled that of the modern petroleum industry. He began his career in the oil fields of western Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the American oil business. Before 1910, he headed west, traveling with his father and brother to the fields of Kansas to work as contract drillers. Slick met with failure in these early years, as he moved on to Oklahoma in an attempt to locate oil. In 1912 he received the financial backing to drill one more well, which turned out to be the discovery well for the vast Cushing Field. This amazing success was followed by more discoveries of fields - a frenzy of acquiring, drilling, then selling that in 1929 culminated with Slick's sale of his Oklahoma holdings in the Prairie Oil and Gas Company - up until that time, the largest sale of oil properties by an individual. In this first biography of Tom Slick, Ray Miles fleshes out the man who, despite his legendary drive - and the high-profile nature of the oil business - was exceedingly private and withdrawn. Miles relies on newspaper accounts, court and business records, correspondence, and personal interviews with family, friends, and associates to render a portrait of one of the most successful and colorful, yet elusive, businessmen of his day.

This text analyses the causes and far-reaching consequences of Iran's oil nationalization during the 1950s, focusing on the extensive and misguided involvement of the United States and Great Britain.

"In the United States, proposals for gasoline tax hikes have consistently met with broad-based congressional opposition. Although such taxes are a common and effective method of conserving energy in other industrialized nations, U.S. policy has traditionally relied on regulatory programs rather than fuel taxes to promote energy efficiency in automotive transportation. This book examines both the political causes and the economic effects of this idiosyncratic policy preference. Moderating the consumption and importation of oil has been an explicit goal of the United States over the past twenty years. Pietro S. Nivola and Robert W. Crandall argue that a higher levy on gasoline would be a more efficient way of achieving this goal than current automotive fuel economy standards. In fact, they find that an additional excise of less than twenty-five cents per gallon over the past dozen years would have conserved more oil than has the existing policy of administering gas mileage requirements for new passenger vehicles. And such a tax, they maintain, would not be as detrimental to the economy as opponents fear, nor as regressive as they claim. Why, then, is there such a strong national resistance to a fuel tax in the United States? And why is there less resistance in other countries? The authors examine the development of motor-fuel excises in Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Canada, and explain the historical and political factors that have led to different national policy orientations. Turning their attention back to the United States, Nivola and Crandall show how regulatory measures have fallen short of their goal and why political barriers to bolder taxation of gasoline remain formidable. They conclude by offering suggestions for new directions in U.S. energy policy at the federal, state, and local level. "

The practical examples and step-by-step calculations in the book, partnered with illustrations and diagrams, make the text easy to read and understand. Johnston does an excellent job clarifying international oilfield taxation and regulation in the same way he explained oilfield accounting in his other PennWell title, Oil Company Financial Analysis in Nontechnical Language. Covers everything from historical development of contracts to terminology of accounting and negotiations, to threshold field size analysis, to arithmetic behind contract terms, and much more.

Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and formerly part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, is a city built on and with oil. In fact, oil and urbanism in Baku have been completely intertwined, economically, politically, and physically in the spaces of the city. Its first oil boom in the late 19th century was driven by the Russian branch of the Nobel family modernising the exploitation of oil fields around Baku, and local oil barons pouring their new wealth into building a cosmopolitan city centre. During the Soviet period, Baku became the site of an urban experiment: the shaping an oil city of socialist man. This project included Neft Dashlari, a city built on trestles in the Caspian Sea, housing thousands of workers, schools, shops, gardens, clinics, cinemas and more. This first off-shore rig in the world became the emblem of Baku's second oil boom. Today, Baku is experiencing its third oil boom. For Baku's city planners and business elites, that future is based on a careful reading of Baku as a project in which urbanism and oil are inextricably linked. This new book investigates how oil stimulated urban development in Baku, and explores in detail the more complex and important question of how the disparate spatial logics, knowledge bases, and practices of oil production and urban production intersected, impacted and transformed one another. Based on a vast research project and drawing on rich and previously unpublished material, Baku - Oil and Urbanism is organised into three broadly conceived historical periods defined by the political, economic, technological conditions in which the interwoven evolution of oil and urban production unfolded. The book also features a new photo essay by celebrated photographer Iwan Baan.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century the United States is both more involved in the global political economy and less able to shape its course. In this lucid and theoretically sophiticated book, Ikenberry focuses on the oil price shocks of 1973-74 and 1979, which placed extraordinary new burdens on governments worldwide and partiuclarly on that of the United States.

The Polar North is known to be home to large gas and oil reserves and its positionholds signifi cant trading and military advantages, yet the maritime boundaries of the region remain ill-defined. In the twenty-first century the Arctic is undergoing profound change. As the sea ice melts, a result of accelerating climate change, global governance has become vital. In this first of three volumes, the latest research and analysis from the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, the world's leading Arctic research body, is brought together. Arctic Governance: Law and Politics investigates the legal and political order of the Polar North, focusing on governance structures and the Law of the Sea. Are the current mechanisms at work effective? Are the Arctic states' interests really clashing, or is the atmosphere of a more cooperative nature? Skilfully delineating policy in the region and analysing the consequences of treaty agreements, Arctic Governance's uncovering of a rather orderly 'Arctic race' will become an indispensable contribution to contemporary International Relations concerning the Polar North.

"Oil," writes Ruth Sheldon Knowles, "is the most hazardous, expensive, heartbreaking gambling game in the world." And, as this book dramatically proves, the men who have been the gamblers of the American oil business have been some of the most colorful and fantastic personalities in our history.

"The Greatest Gamblers "is the story of our remarkable oilmen and the vast industry they have created-from its simple beginnings in 1859 at Titusville, Pennsylvania, to the big-business oil operations of today. Here are the wildcatters, the prospectors, the scientists, the hunch players (Mrs. Knowles points out that independent oilmen have discovered more than three-fourths of America's oil fields). Here you will meet "unlucky" Dad Joiner, whose fortunes changed only in his seventies when a worthless ten-acre tract of Texas wasteland proved the key to one of America's two biggest oil fields; and H. 1. Hunt, who parlayed an oil lease he won at a poker game into an oil business that made him one of the richest men in the United States.

Harry Sinclair ... Tom Slick ... Mike Benedum ... Everette DeGolyer ... Charles Canfield ... Edward Doheny -- the pages of this book are crowded with the stories of such men, their tough boom towns, their dogged persistence and wild successes, and the brutal competition they faced.

But "The Greatest Gambler "is also the story of a prospectors' rush that has become an organized industry. An absorbing portion of the book tells how the industry has found new uses for petroleum and its by products, and how this sometimes involved as much heartbreak as prospecting. There were the ships that exploded when oilmen first tried to market petroleum as marine fuel, the locomotive roundhouse that blew up when they first tried to convert railroads to oil. Mrs. Knowles discusses knowledgeably the present predicament of the petroleum industry and what is necessary to find and develop America's remaining great oil and gas resources. "The Greatest Gamblers "is a lively and authoritative account of what is probably the most fascinating and adventurous business of all.

In August of 1942, Great Britain faced a desperate situation. German bombers hammered the nation's industrial cities and towns daily, and the toll in loss of life and resources rose steadily. Guy H. Woodward and Grace Steele Woodward tell for the first time the story of how the British, with the aid of forty-four oilfield roughnecks from the United States, developed vital shallow pools of oil in Britain's famed Sherwood Forest. THE SECRET OF SHERWOOD FOREST is based on thousands of reports, letters, and documents released to the authors in 1968. Guy H. Woodward was a lawyer, former general counsel for the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association in Washington, and former chair of the American Petroleum Institute's production section. Grace Steele Woodward was the author of numberous books, including THE CHEROKEES and POCAHONTAS also published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

In January 1969, the blowout on an offshore oil platform off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and the resulting oil spill proved to be a transformative event in pollution control and the nascent environmental activism movement. It accelerated the advancement of federal government policies and would change the way the federal government managed environmental pollution. Over the next three years, Congress worked to pass laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act, and revolutionized the way that the United States dealt with environmental pollution. At the same time, scientists developed methods to detect chemical pollution that had been discharged into rivers and streams by industrial facilities. Slick Policy presents an original and in-depth history of the 1969 Santa Barbara spill. Teresa Sabol Spezio provides a background of water pollution control, government oversight of federally-funded projects, and chemical detection methods in place prior to the spill. She then shows how scientists and politicians used public outrage over the spill to implement wide-ranging changes to federal environmental and science policy, and demonstrates the advancements to offshore oil drilling, pollution technology, and water protection law that resulted from these actions.

In the past decade, the need for oil in Asia's new industrial powers, China and India, has grown dramatically. The need for oil in Asia's new industrial powers, China and India, has grown dramatically. The New Kings of Crude takes the reader from the dusty streets of an African capital to Asia's glistening corporate towers to provide a first look at how the world's rising economies established new international oil empires in Sudan, amid one of Africa's longest-running and deadliest civil wars. For over a decade, Sudan fuelled the international rise of Chinese and Indian national oil companies. But the political turmoil surrounding the historic division of Africa's largest country, with the birth of South Sudan, challenged Asia's oil giants to chart a new course. Luke Patey weaves together the stories of hardened oilmen, powerful politicians, rebel fighters, and human rights activists to show how the lure of oil brought China and India into Sudan - only later to ensnare both in the messy politics of a divided country. His book also introduces the reader to the Chinese and Indian oilmen and politicians who were willing to become entangled in an African civil war in the pursuit of the world's most coveted resource. It offers a portrait of the challenges China and India are increasingly facing as emerging powers in the world.

The availability of low-cost energy from fossil fuels - in particular oil - has been the driving force behind postwar global economic growth, such that the petroleum industry has some of the world's largest companies. This book examines the economics of the oil and gas industry, from exploration, development and production, to transportation, refining and marketing. At each stage of the value chain, the key economic costs and considerations are presented in order to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the workings of the industry. The book examines some of the unique economic challenges the industry faces, including negotiating international contracts with host countries (to gain access to hydrocarbons), managing the risks of recovery, implementing cross-border pipelines, dealing with huge variations in the taxation of refined products, and reacting to the effect of price control and subsidization in the OPEC nations which can create massive volatility in pricing. The search for low-carbon fuels, the impact of shale gas, the prospect of finite reserves, and the global political realities of the competing demands of oil-importing and oil-exporting countries are shown to make the sector high risk, but the economic rewards can be huge.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is one of the most recognizable acronyms among international organizations. It is mainly associated with the 'oil shock' of 1973 when prices of petroleum quadrupled and industrialized countries and consumers were forced to face the limits of their development model. This is the first history of OPEC and of its members written by a professional historian. It carries the reader from the formation of the first petrostate in the world, Venezuela in the late 1920s, to the global ascent of petrostates and OPEC during the 1970s, to their crisis in the late-1980s and early- 1990s. Formed in 1960, OPEC was the first international organization of the Global South. It was perceived as acting as the economic 'spearhead' of the Global South and acquired a role that went far beyond the realm of oil politics. Petrostates such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran were (and continue to be) key regional actors, and their enduring cooperation, defying wide political and cultural differences and even wars, speaks to the centrality of natural resources in the history of the twentieth century, and to the underlying conflict between producers and consumers of these natural resources.

Beneath Venezuelan soil lies an ocean of crude-the world's largest reserves-an oil patch that shaped the nature of the global energy business. Unfortunately, a dysfunctional anti-American, leftist government controls this vast resource and has used its wealth to foster voter support, ultimately wreaking economic havoc. Crude Nation reveals the ways in which this mismanagement has led to Venezuela's economic ruin and turned the country into a cautionary tale for the world. Raul Gallegos, a former Caracas-based oil correspondent, paints a picture both vivid and analytical of the country's economic decline, the government's foolhardy economic policies, and the wrecked lives of Venezuelans. Without transparency, the Venezuelan government uses oil money to subsidize life for its citizens in myriad unsustainable ways, while regulating nearly every aspect of day-to-day existence in Venezuela. This has created a paradox in which citizens can fill up the tanks of their SUVs for less than one American dollar while simultaneously enduring nationwide shortages of staples such as milk, sugar, and toilet paper. Gallegos's insightful analysis shows how mismanagement has ruined Venezuela again and again over the past century and lays out how Venezuelans can begin to fix their country, a nation that can play an important role in the global energy industry.