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This paper aims to examine the short-term market impact of the beginning of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine (24 February 2022), the world’s largest oil and gas companies.

The authors examine the world’s 100 largest listed oil and gas companies at and around the beginning of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine using an event study methodology.

The authors observe a positive and statistically significant stock price reaction at and around the military conflict. These results are consistent with the asset pricing perspective. Conversely, the stock market returns of Russian oil and gas companies, as well as those companies that were “forced” to divest in Russia due to corporate activism, exhibit a negative and statistically significant impact from the conflict. These reactions are reinforced or mitigated by company-specific characteristics such as size, profitability and institutional ownership. Finally, the findings indicate that companies engaged in oil and gas exploration and production report abnormally higher returns compared to firms in the other two subsectors of the industry.

The effect of the war on stock markets has been relatively little examined in the financial theory. This study intends to fill this gap in the literature.

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.

This study aims to identify factors that influence corporate environmental disclosure (CED) quality.

Using content analysis, an index and scoring scheme were applied to annual reports, stand-alone reports and corporate homepages of a sample of 116 oil and gas companies in 19 developing countries (DCs).

The results of this study reveal that out of 12 hypothesized variables, only 5 variables (company size, foreign ownership, profitability, leverage and membership of industry’s associations) are positively related to the CED quality.

The study has implications in enhancing the understanding of CED practices by oil and gas companies in DCs and the factors that influence the quality of such disclosure. Thus, the results of the study serve as input toward the development of improved regulations concerning CED for the oil and gas industry and provide guidelines to the regulators to make relevant decisions on social and environmental information items to be incorporated in the regulatory standards.

The current study attempts to fill the gaps in the literature by examining CED quality (rather than its quantity), concentrating on environmental disclosure made on the three main mediums of reporting. The study also extends previous research of CED by investigating some factors that have the potential to influence the content-quality of environmental disclosure, such as type of company (independent or constrain company) and industry’s association membership which have never been examined in the related literature.

This chapter examines the oil and gas industry and the efficacy of vertical integration strategies. Using multiple theoretical lenses ranging from the resource-based view, transactions costs, and parenting perspective, the chapter considers different arguments associated with vertical integration. The 2011 breakup of ConocoPhillips and its global value chain helps address the question of which strategy is best – integrated or nonintegrated. We provide several conclusions about the structure of integration and value chains within the oil and gas industry. First, vertical integration based on the physical transfer of products between value chain activities will generate little firm advantage in the form of classical integration benefits, such as control over input quality or speed to market. Second, competing across the industry value chain as a hedge or strategy against industry cyclicality is not theoretically defensible. Third, pure play industry specialists can create value through management focus, agility, and, transparency for investors. Fourth, firms that compete across a wide range of industry value chain activities can create value-adding corporate strategies if they are able to leverage knowledge and assets across different industry sectors.

This paper aims to explore business relationship framework between two companies. In this research, relationship marketing and transaction cost were used as frameworks to analyze business relationship of two different kinds of companies in Indonesia, oil company and hypermarket. Gronroos (1994) defines relationship marketing is establishing, maintaining and enhancing relationships with customers and other partners, at a profit, so that the objectives of the parties involved are met. This is achieved by a mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises. This definition is a key to analyze the relationship of retailer and their supplier. In contrast, Williamson (1980) argued that relationship in business organization is based on their economic interest, and this approach is known as transaction cost approach. In this kind of relationship, business organizations consider cost and benefit of business relationship.

The design of this study is triangulation. Two approaches were used to answer the research questions. A survey involving 204 respondents was conducted. These are companies in Indonesia oil and gas and retail industries. The types of power of those companies were analyzed using descriptive statistic and paired t test. Also, case study was conducted to gain depth information of two companies, with a large number of business partners among the respondents. The design of case study is holistic case study.

The result shows that, in the oil company, the relationship between a company and their supplier is tied on a strict contract. In fact, the relationship of supplier and company in a fuel company based on transaction cost theory. In the retail company, the relationship of supplier and retailer based on trust, commitment and satisfaction. Those three construct are the foundation of relationship marketing. Companies in those two industries tend to use non-coercive power to influence their business partners.

This study analyzes type of business relationship in industries in emerging markets. It also discusses type of influence strategy used by companies to control their business partners to gain mutual benefit.

This study aims to examine whether US oil and gas companies engaged in earnings management during the 2011 Arab Spring, which resulted in significant increases in both crude oil and gasoline prices.

Following a similar research methodology from prior research, this study tests the existence of earnings management based on discretionary total accruals, current accruals and non-current accruals to determine whether both large petroleum refining firms and relatively small oil and gas-producing firms, jointly and separately, lowered reported earnings.

The results show that, overall, US oil and gas companies as a group engaged in income-decreasing earnings management during the Arab Spring. The results seem to support the political cost hypothesis. However, further analyses indicate that the results are driven by abnormal income-decreasing accruals of the relatively small oil and gas-producing firms, which are politically less sensitive.

The findings suggest that there may be other non-political cost incentives, such as income smoothing, for the relatively small oil and gas-producing firms managing earnings downward during periods of large oil price increases. However, the possibility for firms with reversals of income-increasing activity from other quarters is not ruled out.

This study not only is the first empirical study of earnings management by oil and gas companies during the Arab Spring, but also contributes to extant earnings management literature regarding political cost hypothesis, which still remains a major concern for US oil and gas companies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore firm–stakeholder environmental accountability relationship in the Nigerian oil and gas industry.

The paper develops, from the interdisciplinary literature, a normative framework that links the dominant environmentalism paradigm to the business-firm-causality environmental philosophy. The link is underpinned by the theory of stakeholder identification and salience to enable the identification and evaluation of the importance placed on each environmental stakeholder group by oil and gas companies in the Nigerian oil and gas sector.

This paper submits that three factors, originating from how these companies identify and classify green stakeholders, lead to little and unimpressive efforts to effectively discharge environmental accountability. These factors include weak, legal powers of regulatory environmental stakeholders; non-recognition of the host communities as powerful environmental stakeholders; and non-recognition of the Nigerian public as legitimate environmental stakeholders.

Underestimating the importance of some key, environmental stakeholders and the weak powers of regulatory environmental stakeholders leads to limited commitments to environmental accountability by oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria. Inevitably, this results in persistent conflict, violence, destruction of the oil companies’ properties and other various forms of unrest common in the Niger Delta.

The paper develops a unique normative framework from the relevant literature in environmental ethics, environmental management and environmental accounting that are used to evaluate firms-stakeholder environmental accountability relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding about how energy supply chains work to build resilience against exogenous security threats and thereafter what support mechanisms should be introduced or improved by the European Union.

Five case studies and data collection from multiple sources is used to understand what exogenous security threats could lead to the disruption of oil and gas flows to Europe, how energy companies, from a supply chain perspective, are working to manage these threats and finally, how the EU may coordinate the security of the energy sector in collaboration with supply chain companies.

Results show that today, oil and gas supply chains have in place a good combination of disruption strategies, including portfolio diversification, flexible contracts, transport capacity planning and safety stocks. The most relevant security threats the companies fear, include hijacking of vessels (sea piracy), but also terrorism, and wars. Finally, the study highlights that the European Union has built a comprehensive portfolio of strategies to deal with scarcity of oil and gas resources. However, these approaches are not often synchronized with supply chain strategies.

The paper provides guidance for supply chain managers dealing with critical suppliers located in conflict environments. The paper recommends that supply chain managers fine tune their strategies in coordination with governmental actions in foreign politics, dependence reduction and crisis management. This may be achieved by closer communication with governments and potentially through the creation of a pan-European sector alliance.

Previous research discusses the topic of supply chain resilience and supply chain risk management. However, none of these studies report on exogenous security threats and disruption strategies of oil and gas supply chains. At the same time, previous research lacks detailed studies describing the interaction between governments and energy supply chains.

Data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric technique is used to assess the efficiency of decision-making units which are producing identical set of outputs using identical set of inputs. The purpose of this paper is to find the technical efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency (SE) levels of Indian oil and gas sector companies and to provide benchmark targets to the inefficient companies in order to achieve efficiency level.

In the present study, a group of 22 oil and gas companies which are listed on the National Stock Exchange for which the data were available for the period 2013–2017 has been considered. DEA has been performed to compare the efficiency levels of all companies. To measure efficiency, three input variables, namely, combined materials consumed and manufacturing expenses, employee benefit expenses and capital investment and two output variables – operating revenues and profit after tax (PAT) have been considered. On the basis of performance for the financial year ending 2017, benchmark targets based on DEA–CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes) model have been provided to the inefficient companies that should be focused upon by them to attain the efficiency level. The performance of the companies for the past five years has been examined to check the fluctuations in the various efficiency scores of the companies considered in the study over the years.

From the results obtained, it is observed that 59 percent, i.e. 13 out of 22 companies are technically efficient. By considering DEA BCC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper) model, 16 companies are observed to be pure technically efficient. In terms of SE, there are 14 such companies. The inefficient units need to improve in terms of input and output variables and for this motive, specified targets are assigned to them. Some of these companies need to upgrade significantly and the managers must take the concern earnestly. The study has also thrown light on the performance of the companies over last five years which shows Oil India Ltd, Gujarat State Petronet Ltd, Petronet LNG Ltd, IGL Ltd, Mahanagar Gas, Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd and BPCL Ltd as consistently efficient companies.

The present study has made an attempt to evaluate the efficiency of Indian oil and gas sector. The results of the study have significant inferences for the policy makers and managers of the companies operating in the sector. The results of the study provide benchmark target level to the companies of Oil and Gas sector which can help the managers of the relatively less efficient companies to focus on the ways to improve efficiency. The improvement in efficiency of a company would not only benefit the shareholders, but also the investors and other stakeholders of the company.

In the context of Indian economy, very limited number of studies have focused to measure the efficiency of oil and gas sector in the context of Indian economy. The present study aims to provide the latest insight to the efficiency of the companies especially operating in the Indian oil and gas sector. Further, as per our knowledge, this study is distinctive in terms of analyzing the efficiency of Indian oil and gas sector for a period of five years. The longitudinal study of the sector efficiency provides a bird eye view of the average efficiency level and changes in the efficiency levels of the companies over the years.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how companies are handling the issue of knowledge retention from old age retiring workers in the oil and gas sector. This is achieved by providing a detailed insight on the challenges and strategies related to knowledge retention through study of companies from different geographical locations across the globe.

The study adopts a qualitative research methodology and 20 semi-structured interviews, with open-ended and probing questions, were conducted to gain an in-depth insight into the knowledge retention phenomena.

Knowledge retention activities tend to be inconsistent in majority of the oil and gas companies, with not much work being done regarding knowledge loss from old employees, partly because of the fall in oil prices and layoffs. Oil prices turn out to be a decisive factor in oil and gas industry regarding workforce and knowledge retention activities. The political situation and geographical locations of the companies also affect the knowledge retention activities. Moreover, the aging workforce and retirement issue is more acute in the upstream sector.

The focus of the study was on the oil and gas sector, and thus the research results may lack generalizability.

This paper fulfills an identified need for investigating the issues and challenges of knowledge retention regarding old age retiring employees by taking into account a global perspective and providing a comparison among different companies in different geographical locations.