Title: New evaluation of petroleum companies based on the agility level in Gulf area

Authors: Ibrahim H. Garbie; Fahad S. Al-Hosni

Addresses: Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Al-Khoud 123, Muscat, Oman; Mechanical Engineering Department, College of Engineering at Helwan, Helwan University, P.O. Box, 11792, Helwan, Cairo, Egypt ' Petroleum Development of Oman (PDO), P.O. Box 92, Mina Al Fahal, 116, Muscat, Oman

Abstract: The oil industry is becoming a more competitive environment where objectives of the oil companies have to deal with multiple business challenges. Some of those challenges are the unexpected oil prices and customer demands where the companies have to continuously change their production strategies to meet the new requirements. Analysis and measuring the agility level in petroleum companies is very important to mitigate unexpected challenges. Agile systems in petroleum companies are considered as production and/or management philosophies that integrate the available production strategies, technology, people and organisation management systems. In this paper, a conceptual framework or approach is proposed to measure the agility level (AS) of the petroleum companies based on four pillars. These pillars are: production strategies, level of qualifying human resources, technologies, and organisation management systems. A questionnaire was designed and administered covering the whole important aspects and issues of agility pillars. Three case studies are presented to demonstrate the proposed approach insight into those characteristics which is used for assessing the agility level that is most relevant within the oil and gas industry.

Keywords: agility level; agile systems; petroleum companies; performance evaluation; oil industry; oil prices; customer demand; production strategies; human resources; technology; organisational management; oil and gas industry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2014.065622

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2014 Vol.18 No.4, pp.528 - 572

Published online: 07 Nov 2014 *

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