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The purpose of this paper is to explain the SEC's proposed rule to modify the oil and gas reporting requirements that have been defined heretofore in Rule 4‐10, Regulation S‐X.

The paper explains the provisions of the existing rule, outlines the SEC's proposed changes (such as allowing companies to disclose reserves using probabilistic methodologies and tightening project maturity requirements for proved reserves), and explains why the proposed rule is an ambitious and overdue step to overhaul the SEC's oil and gas disclosure regime.

The alert discusses the SEC's proposed new rule that will replace the existing standard for disclosing volumes of oil and gas reserves in SEC filings. The rule applies to all US oil and gas public companies and also foreign oil and gas companies whose shares are traded on US exchanges via American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). Some of the larger non‐US companies affected by this rule change include Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Total, Eni, StatoilHydro, Petrobras, and CNOOC.

The paper shows that the proposed rule will be of interest to oil and gas companies, research analysts at investment banks that publish reports about oil and gas companies, and any firms that engage in proprietary investing in these companies. This rule change has broad interest for many companies. For example, in addition to dozens of oil and gas industry firms, the 80 firms and individuals who commented on the Concept Release that preceded this proposed rule included major financial institutions, rating agencies, and investment banks.

The research aims to qualitatively explore e-marketplace service quality (EMSQ) from the perspective of an industrial buyer as a sole decision-maker. It further intends to quantitatively examine its impact on the industrial buyer's perceived value (PV), overall satisfaction (SAT), and e-loyalty (ELOY) in the context of business-to-government (B2G) e-commerce.

The research used an exploratory sequential mixed-method design. A qualitative exploratory study of EMSQ was conducted using a Straussian grounded theory (GT) technique, followed by an explanatory quantitative study using PLS-SEM to evaluate causal links between various research variables.

In the area of e-services, the investigation found that the hierarchical structure of EMSQ encompasses six broadly applicable dimensions and one B2G context-specific dimension of the e-governance process quality. The study also reinforced previous research findings in the B2C and B2B e-commerce domains, highlighting that e-service quality positively impacts online buyer's PV, SAT and ELOY.

This research contributed to the area of e-service operations by developing and validating the EMSQ model in the B2G e-commerce settings. Further, it has opened up new research avenues in B2G e-commerce.

The findings from this research highlighted that e-service operations managers should focus on usability, technological concerns, product/vendor quality concerns, customer support reliability, along with effective e-governance, ordering and logistics processes for e-business success. It also provides policymakers with guidelines for making B2G e-marketplaces sustainable.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study employing the GT and PLS-SEM techniques to explore EMSQ from the viewpoint of industrial buyers in B2G e-commerce. The study contributed to prior literature by proposing and validating the hierarchical EMSQ model.