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The purpose of this study is to investigate the predictability of crude oil price and shale oil production, in a bid to examine the possibility of bi-directional causality.

The study adopts a recently developed predictability model by Westerlund and Narayan (2015), which accounts for persistence, endogeneity and heteroscedasticity. It also accounts for structural breaks in the predictive models.

The empirical results show that only a unidirectional causal relationship from crude oil price to shale oil production exists. This happens as crude oil price appears to be a good predictor of shale oil production; however, shale oil production does not serve as a good predictor for crude oil price. Accounting for structural break was found to improve the predictability and forecast accuracy of the predictive model. Our result is robust to choice of crude oil price benchmarks (West Texas Intermediate, Brent, Dubai Fateh and Refiners’ Acquisition Cost) and their denominations (real or nominal).

The result implies that crude oil price must be considered when predicting shale oil production. Meanwhile, the non-significance of shale of production in crude oil price predictive model provides information to potential analyst, researchers and countries predicting crude oil price that failure to account for the effect of shale oil production would not have significant impact on the forecast accuracy of their models.

The study contributes originally to the literature on crude oil price–shale oil production in four major ways. First, it applies a recently developed predictability method by Westerlund and Narayan (2015), which is more suitable for dealing with persistence, conditional heteroscedasticity and endogeneity in the predictors. Second, it investigates existence of reverse causality between crude oil price and shale oil production. Third, it examines the variation in the response and effect of four major crude oil price benchmarks. Fourth, it considers crude oil price in both real and nominal terms.

Since the late 1980s, learning organisations have been deemed to have a number of advantages over non‐learning ones. One organisation that has been identified as “a premiere learning organisation”, is Royal Dutch Shell (RDS). Despite this, in 1998 its results were the worst in its history. Seeks to explain how and why this happened. Considers the advantages claimed for learning organisations, the features of them that enhance an organisation’s competitive advantage and those that can obstruct their effectiveness. Analyses the performance of RDS over a period of time in the light of the changing conditions in the oil industry. In particular examines a variety of learning methods used by RDS in the critical period prior to and during the 1990s. From this, addresses differences between the characteristics of RDS in the 1990s, compared with previously, on the one hand, and with those identified as significant for ensuring that learning organisations create competitive advantage, on the other hand, in an effort to explain RDS’s poor performance at the end of the 1990s.

The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine the structural origins of international crude oil price fluctuation.

The paper establishes a structural vector autoregression model based on the generalized supply and demand analysis of crude oil price fluctuation and performance the structural decomposition of price shocks with impulse response analysis of those factors.

It is found that four kinds of structural shocks derived from the generalized supply and demand analysis are the essential determinants of crude oil prices fluctuation. On one hand, similar to Kilian's results, the supply side shocks – both the exogenous geopolitical ones and other oil supply shocks have little influence. Whereas, the demand side shocks – both the aggregate demand shock and the oil market specific demand shock have prominent effects. On the other hand, with the expanded sample range, it is found that the dynamic characteristic of the impulse response of oil price to demand side factors is not only incompatible with the basic economic theory, but also clashes with Kilian's statement based upon his research. It is conjured that the incompatibility comes from the ignorance of the finer decomposition of demand side factors. To decompose those demand side factors further, the US dollar liquidity was added into the model. The results show that the impact of US dollar liquidity on the fluctuation of oil prices cannot be ignored. The argument that ascribes the soaring international crude oil price to China's economic growth lacks theoretical and empirical evidence.

The paper contributes marginally to the research on the structural origins of international crude oil price fluctuation and sheds light on the possibility of finer decomposition of demand side oil shocks.