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This paper aims to interrogate the accountabilities of the foreign companies which have directly invested in the Iraqi oil and gas industry.

Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the authors first map the stakeholder accountabilities (qualitative) of foreign oil and gas companies and second, the authors seek to demonstrate quantitatively – through structural break tests and publicly available sustainability reports – whether these companies have accounted for their environmental and social impacts both to Iraqi people and to the global community.

The authors find that the Western democratic values embedded in stakeholder theory, in terms of sustainability, do not hold the same meaning in cultural contexts where conceptions and application of Western democratic values are deeply problematic. This paper identifies a crucial problem in the global oil supply chain and problematises the application of traditional theoretical approaches in the context of the Iraqi oil and gas industry.

Implications of this study include the refocus of attention onto the local and global environmental impacts of the Iraqi oil and gas industry by foreign direct investments. Such a refocus highlights the reasons and ways that decision makers should accommodate these less salient stakeholders.

The primary contribution is the critique of the lack of environmental accountability of foreign direct investment companies in the Iraqi oil and gas industry. The authors also make theoretical and methodological contributions via the problematisation of the cultural bias inherent in traditional stakeholder theories, and by introducing a quantitative method to evaluate the accountabilities of companies.

Despite the contributions of both the oil and gas and construction industries to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country, both industries are still marred by incessant accidents. Therefore, the aim of this study is to compare the health and safety practises of the construction and oil and gas industries in Nigeria in order to suggest the best approach to health and safety practices.

A survey questionnaire was developed and administered to professionals working in the construction and oil and gas industries. Data were analysed using the relative importance index (RII). An independent sample t-test was also conducted to determine whether there was a significant difference in the construction and oil and gas industries.

The study revealed that the rate at which health and safety are practised in the oil and gas industry is comparatively high compared to how they are practised in the construction industry. Proper site layout and planning, provision of a safe working environment, proper health and safety risk assessment were more predominantly practised in the oil and gas industry, while proper site layout and planning, disallowing unauthorised entry into site and the provision of a safe working environment were predominantly practised in the construction industry.

This study is the first to compare the health and safety practises of the construction and oil and gas industries in Nigeria. This study was significant because it would provide insight into construction and oil and gas managers, as well as other decision-makers in both industries, on how to improve health and safety practices.

Deployment of health and safety standards in extremely hazardous work environments such as oil and gas sector, is essential to minimise accidents leaving employees permanently or temporarily incapacitated. The purpose of this research, is to understand why there are frequent accidents in case country's oil and gas sector, with a view to recommend solutions to mitigate problems.

Research methodology involved extensive review of the literature to appreciate background, and current research on typical accidents and safety measures taken at oil and gas construction sites to minimise accidents in a middle east country. Interviews, questionnaires and case stidies were deployed to acquire data which highlighted major reasons for accidents occurrence at oil and gas construction sites, and safety tools and techniques that could reduce accident rate if adopted by companies.

Findings, showed that oil and gas construction projects in case country were prone to health and safety related risks, challenges and accidents due to failure to comply with standards and legislation. Construction site teams and shop floor staff were rarely involved in development of safety policies, and some had no understanding of requirements and procedures underpinning safety during operations. Research recommended rapid application/adoption of international standards underpinned by ISO 45000 series and staff training at all levels. Deployment of robots and use of machine learning technology were suggested to implement risky tasks in the sector.

Research was based on rampant accidents occurring in hazardous oil and gas sector in country studied. Enforcement of health and safety standards, and use of modern tools and techniques were recommended to minimise accident rate.

Oil and gas sector has more disruptions regarding its logistics management than any other industry. It is critical to understand which external security threats disrupt the oil and gas supply chain (OGSC). Recently, the time interval between these disruptions became frequent. the purpose of this paper is to identify key logistics elements that lead to such disruptions which would greatly benefit the oil and gas industry in developing more effective mitigation measures and resilient practices in the future.

This research develops the theoretical framework through a critical review of all theories related to resilience, logistics disruptions and mitigation methods in the oil and gas industry. Afterward, semi-structured interviews were conducted with executives in the Egyptian oil and gas industry to develop a conceptual framework. Finally, an empirical study was conducted through questionnaires with managers in the Egyptian oil and gas sector to develop the applied framework.

This research revealed that achieving an elevated level of flexibility, redundancy, visibility and collaboration in the Egyptian OGSC will significantly increase the level of resilience in the sector and consequently help in mitigating probable logistics disruptions.

This research contributes to academia by providing a conceptual framework for the most common logistics disruptions in the Egyptian OGSC and providing practitioners with the best resilience practices that are feasible and effective in mitigating logistics disruptions.

Previous research studied disruptions in OGSC from different perspectives: economic, social, political, technical, safety, legal and environmental perspectives, but no research highlighted the logistics perspective in the Egyptian context, to the best of the authors’ knowledge.

There is evidence in the literature suggesting the usage of performance measurement framework (PMF) has a positive impact on organisational performance. This is in line with resource based view (RBV) theory, which argues attaining competitive advantage through internal resources and capabilities. In this regard, PMF can be viewed as a “resource” that can be explored in enabling organisational performance. This paper is aimed at developing PMF for the oil and gas supply chain (SC) as a resource and strategic capability.

Drawing on RBV theory, a questionnaire survey was designed based on prior literature review and exploratory interview with five SC experts. Following this, the questionnaires were distributed to 550 companies in the UK and 120 companies in Malaysia, which resulted in 15% overall response rate.

This study presents the prevalence of performance measures (PM) for the oil and gas industry based on the level of importance. It also reveals the impact of the usage of PMF on overall organisational performance. In addition, it identifies the challenges in managing SC performance and factors to be considered in choosing PM.

This study identifies the challenges in managing SC performance and establishes distinctive factors to consider when choosing PM in the oil and gas SC.

The oil and gas industry form the main resource of economy in Iraq and constructing any project in such sectors requires a huge amount of expenses due to the unique requirements that oil and gas facilities required in such projects. Therefore, adopting an appropriate technological approach such as building information modeling (BIM) which is unfortunately not adopted yet in Iraq is essential to successfully deliver these projects. Thus, this paper aimed to introduce BIM to Iraq through Basra Oil Company (BOC) which is one of the biggest public oil and gas companies in Iraq.

The related literature of journals articles, conference proceedings and published reports have been reviewed. As a result, firstly: a hypothesis has been derived that is “If Basra Oil Company (BOC) adopts and applies BIM approach instead of the 2D approach currently used to manage its projects, the company can overcome several constraints in managing its projects that associated with such 2D traditional approach”; secondly: homogenous, consistence and reliable web-based questionnaire has been designed as its Cronbach’s alpha equal to 0.897 and 0.711 for BIM benefits and barriers, respectively. This questionnaire distributed to the BOC related professionals to test such hypothesis by investigating their readiness and accepting of BIM approach and to rank BIM barriers based on five-point Likert scale.

Based on the analysis using IBM SPSS Statistics 26 of 115 responses, almost 50% of the respondents had experience 11–15 years, while 22.6% had experience more than 15 years in oil and gas industry construction projects. Those participants were from diverse engineering majors that are: 4.3% Architectural Engineers, 31.3% Civil Engineers, 20% Mechanical Engineers, 22.6% Electrical Engineers and 21.7% from other engineering majors. The respondents’ departments demography was 16.5% of design department, 12.2% of construction department, 20.9% of Project Management Department, 12.2% of Maintenance department, 4.3% of HSE Department, 13% of Production Department and 20.9% of “Other Department.” The study resulted in 1: accepting BIM approach to be an alternative of current 2D-traditional approach used by the company to manage and construct its projects, since mean of collected data is (4.4332), Kruskal–Wallis H test significance values were 0.398 and 0.372; and ANOVA test significance values were 0.433 and 0.599 among Engineering Majors groups and Company’s Department groups, respectively. 2: Disclosed and sequenced BIM barriers in the company based on their criticality. 3: verifying reliably how BIM attributes are important to oil and gas construction projects in Iraq, 4: the company top management and company policies are the most critical potential factors to hinder or adopt and implement BIM in the company, 5: while cost is not seen a critical barrier to implement BIM in the oil and gas sector.

The limitation of this study is the excluding of decision makers of BOC, thus more profound future studies need to be conducted where top management and decision makers are involved, particularly the present study demonstrated that support of company top management is the most critical factor which can help the company to adopt (BIM).

The study concludes that BIM approach is valuable for managing projects in oil and gas sector in Iraq and identify the originality in output by using the research method. This noble study provides a leverage for enhanced research to adopt and implement building information modeling (BIM) in Iraq as the study originally demonstrates benefits and identifies the critical barriers in BIM implementation to push the boundaries toward adopt Digitalization and reduce CO2 emission in Iraqi oil and gas sector. The study can be used as evidence and platform to encourage professionals and practitioners to present more sophisticated tools of BIM in the oil and gas industry, especially for facility and operation management. These findings achieved via oil and gas experts, and it is first time to achieve such findings from a case study in Iraqi oil and gas sector.

Although there has been an increase in the application of a variety of robust technologies and systems, the oil and gas sector relies on project managers’ soft skills for success because of their vital role. Therefore, this study aims to explore the profound influence of project managers’ soft communication skills on successful risk management within Libya’s oil and gas projects.

A review of relevant literature and a quantitative approach through the administration of a questionnaire were used to determine factors impacting risk management implementation related to managerial communication skills. A total of 246 valid responses were received from the oil and gas companies in Tripoli, Libya. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to examine the direct and moderating relationship drawn by the hypotheses.

The findings suggest that managerial soft skills may be used to improve continuous risk management processes and intra-project communication. It was found that the experience is strengthening the positive relationship between written communication soft skills and project risk management implementation among Libyan oil and gas construction projects.

This study defines project managers’ soft communication skills and analyzes project managers’ soft communication skills with the role of experience as a moderator. This paper presents a valuable contribution by offering original insights tailored explicitly to the Libyan context. The information presented in this paper is relevant to project managers operating within the oil and gas industry. It also offers a novel approach to risk management in the Libyan oil and gas industry that can improve project efficiency and effectiveness.

Geopolitical risks associated with the return of great power politics and growing nationalism have generated new challenges for foreign investors across industries. Oil and gas companies are well acquainted with such risks and have developed strategies to manage them. This paper reviews five of these strategies: divorcing ownership control from operating control in designing collaborative ventures; proactively managing stakeholder relationships; ensuring transparency and communication; diversifying risks while proactively positioning for emerging opportunities; and deliberately planning for exit should such an eventuality arise. Firms outside of oil and gas can draw on these strategies as they navigate the emerging geopolitical context.

This paper reviews five strategies that oil and gas companies can use to manage geopolitical risk: divorcing ownership control from operating control in designing collaborative ventures; proactively managing stakeholder relationships; ensuring transparency and communication; diversifying risks while proactively positioning for emerging opportunities; and deliberately planning for exit should such an eventuality arise.

This study identifies several strategies that oil and gas companies have used to manage geopolitical risks. These tools will be increasingly important in the shifting global political landscape.

Drawing on the experiences of oil and gas companies, this study has identified several strategies that companies can use to shield themselves from the risks that are currently emanating from geopolitics. While these best practices originate in the experiences of oil and gas firms, the ability to deftly manage geopolitical risks is becoming an important prerequisite for companies across industries.

This paper aims to deal with a real-life strategic conflict in joint operations (JOs) for facility location decision and planning in an oil and gas field that stretches over two countries and tries to develop a basis for mitigating such conflict.

This paper develops a novel approach using integer linear programming (ILP) to determine optimal facility location considering technical, economic and environmental factors. Strategic decision-making in JOs is also influenced by business priorities of individual partner, sociopolitical issues and other covert factors. The cost-related quantitative factors are normalized using inverse normalization function as these are to be minimized, and qualitative factors that are multi-decision-making criteria are maximized, thus transforming both qualitative and quantitative factors as a single objective of maximization in ILP model.

The model identifies the most suitable facility location based on a wide range of factors that would provide maximum benefit in the long term, which will help decision-makers and managers.

The model can be expanded incorporating other quantitative and qualitative factors such as tax incentives by the government, local bodies and government regulations.

The applicability of the model is not limited to JOs or oil/gas field, but is applicable to a wide range of sectors.

The model is transparent and based on rational and scientific basis, which would help in building consensus among the dissenting parties and aid in mitigating strategic conflict. Such type of model for mitigating strategic conflict has not been reported/used before.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discourse on livelihood access and challenges of fisherfolks and farmers within coastal communities in Ghana. Insights from such studies can help to create win-win outcomes between communities and oil companies and give the latter social license to operate. Also, it will help to identify the existing knowledge gaps that still need to be filled and contribute to the overall management of Ghana’s oil resources. It will further contribute to the government’s livelihood diversification programs in oil-producing communities.

The study employed the use of qualitative research paradigm to collect primary data in oil- and gas-producing communities in the Western Region of Ghana. Specifically, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted among diverse stakeholders.

Findings from the study show that several people and households along the coast of Ghana’s Western Region depend on the fishing industry as their livelihoods. However, fisherfolks are facing several challenges due to oil production. For instance, the quantity of fish harvest has reduced drastically since oil production started in 2010. Farming activities have also been adversely affected. The study has unearthed that the existing social and economic infrastructure are very limited to support the development of the coastal communities in Ghana’s Western Region. The study suggests that to deal with some of the challenges faced by coastal communities, livelihood diversification programs should be introduced.

Not every community within the oil and gas areas in the Western Region was covered. Future work will address this limitation.

The study has revealed that the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies need to expedite the process of conducting a comprehensive needs assessment of communities and capture them in their medium-term development plans.

The corporate social responsibility programs will create win-win outcomes between oil companies and communities.

The study is an original piece of work with data collected from the field. The study will contribute to the efficient management of natural resources in Ghana and other developing countries.