這篇文章主要是關于石油及天然氣在當前行業中所面臨的主要挑戰。本研究主要分析澳大利亞的石油和天然氣行業,旨在考察澳大利亞工業所面臨的挑戰。這表明商業環境存在越來越多的復雜性，在石油和天然氣行業突出了決策分析的重要性，并開始得到越來越多的關注。本文提供了一個非常重要和有用的背景，以分析投資決策。

本文中已確定的有三個主要因素(麥克米蘭,2000),可能導致該行業在有限的資源和需求當中存在不確定性。首先,作者強調,自1980年代中期以來，全球已經鮮有大型油田被發現開采。雖然在較小的領域有新的發現,但是他們沒能提供同樣的規模經濟。同時之前幾乎所有的大型油田的產量達到頂峰時就會開始下降。

This chapter presents a brief description of the oil and gas industry that highlights the key challenges facing it in the present century. This study is on oil and gas industry in Australia, and aims at examining the challenges faced by the Australian industry. This indicates the growing complexity of the business environment in the upstream oil and gas sector and highlights the reasons why decision analysis is beginning to receive increasing attention in the industry. It provides a very important and useful context to study investment decision-making.

Three main factors have been identified in the (Macmillan, 2000) that may contribute to the uncertainty around the industry’s future - Field size, finite resources, and demand. Firstly, the author highlights that in the recent times where worldwide since the mid-1980s, there have been very few giant oilfields discoveries. Although, smaller fields have been discovered, they have failed to deliver the same economies of scale. At the same time production from nearly all the earlier giant fields have either peaked or are already declining.

Secondly, although it a known fact that oil is a finite resource there is no consensus in the industry about when exactly will demand irreversibly exceed supply. Analysts, such as Campbell (1997) argue that production of conventional oil, which he defines to be that oil with a depletion pattern which starts at zero, rises rapidly to a peak, and then declines rapidly. The statistics might indicate that technically the oil firms are reporting increased reserves in reality this conceals two trends. Firstly, by using new technology either to extend field life or to exploit fields that were previously inaccessible, oil companies have been able to increase their reported reserves. Secondly, petroleum companies are becoming increasingly reliant on gas which is harder to transport and less profitable to produce (The Economist, 1996).

Thirdly, the author indicates that world demand for oil, gas and coal in the 21st century will depend on two contrary forces. Firstly, there is the possible reduction in demand by the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) caused by structural changes, saturated markets, ageing populations and increasing efficiency. With increasing reliance on gas by oil majors and advent of new hybrid engines petrol consumption could reduce by almost 30% (Skeikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani). Secondly, There is potential demand in developing countries. How it is fulfilled depends on future economic growth.
This section discussed the global challenges facing the oil industry. Since the study will focus on E&P industry in Australia, the next section bring forth its structure and issues. The impact on investment decision-making will then be investigated.

The petroleum industry comprises of three major components: Upstream, midstream and downstream. The upstream oil sector is also known as the exploration and production (E&P) sector. The upstream sector includes the discovery and development of potential underground or underwater oil and gas fields and subsequently operating the wells that recover and bring the crude oil and/or raw natural gas to the surface. In this section we will bring forth the structure, and key challenges facing the Australian E&P industry.

Australia is rich in petroleum, natural gas and coal reserves. Australia had 3.3 billion barrels of proven oil reserves (The Oil and Gas Journal (OGJ), January 1, 2011). It contributes approximately 2% of the world proven oil reserves of 138.6 billion barrels and close to 6% of Asia-Pacific proved oil reserves. Coastal areas of Western Australia, Victoria, and the Northern Territory are endowed with majority of reserves. Western Australia contributes 64 percent of the country’s proven crude oil reserves, as well as 75 percent of its condensate and 58 percent of its LPG (OGJ, 2011).

According to OGJ, Australia ranked as the twelfth largest holder of conventional natural gas reserves in the world with 110 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves as of January 2011. It contributes approximately 19% of the world proven gas reserves of 569Tcf and approximately 53% of Asia-Pacific world proven gas reserves. according to an EIA study World Shale Gas Resources, Australia accounted for 396 Tcf of technically recoverable shale gas reserves in 2009.
Over half of Australia’s total primary energy supply (TPES) in 2009 was met by oil and natural gas, and this is expected to increase to two-thirds of TPES in the next two decades. Annual demand for oil and gas grew by 1.3% and 3.4% respectively.

In the case of natural gas, domestic production is expected to meet the country’s demand comfortably and its export is expected to rise. However this does not hold true for oil, where a growing oil demand in the future will be met from imports of refined products. Australia is a net importer of crude oil and refined petroleum products, but a net exporter of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Hydrocarbon exports accounted for 34 percent of total commodity export revenues in its fiscal year 2009- 2010.

Australia’s management of E&P is segregated between the states’ and the Federal (Commonwealth) governments. States manage the applications for onshore exploration and production projects, while the Commonwealth shares jurisdiction over Australia’s offshore projects with the adjacent state or territory. The Ministerial Council of Energy (MCE) was a body created to foster policy coordination between the two. Commonwealth has no ownership stake in the domestic oil and natural gas industry. The industry is regulated by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (RET) and MCE. The MCE is the national policy and governance body for the energy sector.

First giant field was located off the south-east coast of Australia in 1960 which marks beginning of domestic oil production in Australia. Albeit there are approximately 300 plus oil field in Australia maximum production comes from seven major fields. Carnarvon Basin in the north-west of Australia and the Gippsland Basin in the south-eastern Bass Strait are the largest of the country’s petroleum producing basins. Carnarvon Basin accounts for around 66% of total production in 2010 and is mostly exported. However production from the Gippsland Basin has been on a decline since mid-1980s and accounted for less than 15% of total production in 2010. The Gippsland basin’s production is mainly used for domestic refining.

Production from new fields that are ready for operations are expected to offset declining output in other fields in the short term. Over the last few years Australia’s main frontier for oil exploration has moved to the deepwater area of the Timor Sea, although the nearby Carnarvon Basin off the coast of Western Australia remains the busiest area in terms of overall drilling activity. After a spike in drilling activity in the past decade, the discoveries are now ready for commercial operation. The Pyrenees and Van Gogh projects offshore Western Australia came online in 2010, with production capacities of 96,000 bbl/d and 150,000 bbl/d, respectively. In fiscal year 2010-2011, as the production increases these projects are projected by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) to increase oil exports by 7 percent. The Kipper and Turum oilfields in the Gippsland Basin, southeastern Australia are expected to begin production in 2012 at 20,000 bbl/d.

Carnarvon Basin, the Cooper/Eromanga basin, and Gippsland basin account for 96 percent of Australia’s total conventional natural gas production of 1.6 Tcf in 2010. Queensland and New South Wales are the main sources for coal bed methane, which accounted for 13 percent of gas production in 2010. About half of natural gas production is converted into LNG for export and the other half is consumed domestically. Several major new LNG projects are under construction or advanced planning as the Asian LNG market continues to expand and domestic demand increases. The Pluto project (first stage) near Karratha offshore Western Australia was expected to be online in 2012, with estimated capacity of 200 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of LNG per year. Woodside Energy owns 90 percent of the venture supported by 15-year sales contracts with Kansai Electric and Tokyo Gas, which have 5 percent equity each. The Pluto project includes an offshore platform connecting 5 sub-sea wells and a 112-mile pipeline to an onshore LNG facility on the Burrup Peninsula. Plans for a second train are on hold as additional gas supplies are sought. The Gorgon project, led by Chevron (50 percent), with Shell and ExxonMobil (25 percent each), is under construction and is on track to be completed in 2014. The Gorgon gas field, which is 80-124 miles off the northwest coast, is believed to contain 40 Tcf of natural gas and is currently Australia's largest known natural gas resource. The project includes development of the Gorgon gas fields, with connection by subsea pipelines to Barrow Island, where gas processing facilities will have production capacity of 700 Bcf per year. Also planned are LNG shipping facilities to transport products to international markets, and greenhouse gas management via injection of carbon dioxide into deep formations beneath Barrow Island. In the beginning of 2011, Chevron signed long-term sales agreements with Nippon and Kyushu corporations for sales of Gorgon LNG. The project is expected to annually produce 390 Bcf of LNG and 19 million bbl of LPG, as well as 100,000 bbl/d of condensate when completed. The Icthys project, located offshore the northwest coast in the Browse Basin, is expected to begin construction in early 2012. The project is led by Japan's INPEX (74 percent) and Total (26 percent). A 528-mile undersea pipeline will connect the fields to a new export LNG terminal to be built near Darwin. When the project comes onstream in 2016, its production is expected to be 380 Bcf of LNG and 19 million barrels of LPG per year, as well as 100,000 bbl/d of condensate. The final investment decision is expected in the fourth quarter of 2011, following the June 2011 environmental approval by the Australian government.

Major new unconventional LNG production projects under development include: The Gladstone project will be the world's first major coal seam gas (CSG) to LNG operation. Located onshore Queensland, construction reportedly began in September 2011. This project is a joint venture between Santos (30 percent), Petronas (27.5 percent), Total (27.5 percent), and Kogas (15 percent). A long term sales agreement with Kogas has been signed. Gladstone LNG will have initial capacity of 362 Bcf when it comes online in 2015, later increasing to 464 Bcf. Three other major CSG to LNG projects in Queensland are also underway: the Arrow project, a joint venture of Shell and PetroChina; the Australia Pacific project, a joint venture between Origin and ConocoPhillips; and the Queensland Curtis project being developed by BG Group. Together, they could deliver In this paper, author presents an overview of the main contributions in risk analysis for petroleum exploration and production encompassing brief review of previous applications involving the risk analysis in petroleum exploration, field appraisal, development and production forecast under uncertainty and the decision making process.

Along with some of the main trends and challenges, methodologies that affect the present level of risk applications in the petroleum industry aimed at improving the decision-making process are discussed.

While discussing risk analysis in petroleum exploration, the author goes through evolution of the entire technique tracing back from 17th and 18th century from mathematical studies of probabilities to lognormal risk resources distribution (Attanasi and Drew, 1985), Pareto distribution applied to petroleum field-size data in a play (Crovelli, 1995) and (3) fractal normal percentage (Crovelli et al., 1997). He also studies the paper by Walls (1995) which is an important contribution that provides rich insight into the effects of integrating corporate objectives and risk policy into the investment choices for large oil and gas companies using the multi-attribute utility methodology (MAUT). This theory was applied by Walls and Dyer (1996) to investigate changes in corporate risk propensity with respect to changes in firm size in the petroleum industry. Later, MAUT models were applied by Nepomuceno et al. (1999) and Suslick and Furtado (2001) to measure technological progress, environmental constraints as well as the financial performance associated with exploration and production projects located in deep waters.

Several contributions devise petroleum explorations consisting of a series of investment decisions on whether to acquire additional technical data or additional petroleum assets (Rose, 1987). Changing corporate and industry environment and huge contribution generated by the technological development in E&P makes it necessary to monitor firm’s level of risk aversion on a continued basis (Rose 2000).

Major uncertainties at exploration stage relate to volumes in place and economics. With increased level of information, these uncertainties are mitigated and consequently the importance of the uncertainties related to the recovery factor increases. Risk analysis in appraisal and development phase is complex and it has been identified that quantifying risk alone is not sufficient. It has become necessary adopt modern techniques which are pointing to (1) quantification of value of information and flexibility, (2) optimization of production under uncertainty, (3) mitigation of risk and (4) treatment of risk as opportunity.

Robust methodologies developed to quantify VoI and VoF have made the decision to invest in information or flexibility easier.
Finally, the author concludes that despite limitations and difficulties, risk analysis provides a means for handling highly complex decisions characterized by multiple objectives and high degrees of uncertainty in diverse stages of petroleum upstream. It also provides an approach for dealing with complex value tradeoff and preferences of the stakeholders in the decision process in oil exploration and production. It is a systematic and comprehensive way for considering all relevant factors in a decision in the E&P process.

This chapter has used the Oil and E&P industry literature to present a brief description of the industry. The main challenges facing the industry in the 21st century were discussed. The structure and the companies operating in the Australian E&P industry were examined. This highlighted the complex business environment of those companies operating in the upstream oil and gas industry. This brought increased attention and interest in decision analysis techniques in the industry. Limitations of recent studies into current practice in investment appraisal in the oil industry have been highlighted and therefore there is a need for a study to investigate investment decision-making in the oil and gas industry further.

Communication, refers to the people passed through verbal and nonverbal ways and understand the process of information, knowledge, is the people to understand others thought, emotions, views and values of a means of two-way.Communication is the process of whole process of the exchange of information, refer to the sender information will be encoded information according to certain procedures, through the information communication channel is passed to the recipient, the recipient will receive the information decoding process and the process of information feedback to the sender.Communication process model as shown in the figure below, which includes the information sender, information and coding, channel, receiver, decoding, feedback and other seven elements.

Communication personnel management at the grassroots level leaves significant, as futurists John naisbitt said: "the future competition will be to manage competition, the focus of competition is that each society between the members of the organization and effective communication with outside organizations."In the process of personnel management, only pay attention to the communication of information management, internal and external environment, a comprehensive grasp dynamic environment and the staff thought, can build a good internal and external environment for the personnel management, improve management efficiency.

Communication is the precondition of forces managers to plan, decision-making, and based on the forces managers in the face of changing internal and external environment, planning, decision-making correctly or not lies in a correct judgment of administrators.And judgment is correct, the key lies in the quality and quantity of information, and information communication is needed to play a role.If the message, key, timely, comprehensive decision and plan can be realistic, in line with the objective laws, the likelihood of success.If forces managers and officers and soldiers not enough communication, master even without all the information is inaccurate and can not guarantee to make the right judgment in the management, work out a plan for the right, even if it is to work out plan, this plan is also does not conform to the reality, will affect the management efficiency.

For harmonious relations of troops, managing conflicts can be effectively resolved, mainly by the level of communication between officers and men, channels and methods to decide.Through effective communication can enhance mutual understanding between officers and men.Communication can not only convey information about knowledge, thoughts and feelings can transfer information, promote the emotion communion between officers and men, to make feel better, reduce the contradiction and conflict of interpersonal relationships.Especially the relationship between the managers and by managers of optimization, so communication is more effective communication between officers and men, misunderstanding is likely to be in the management process, estrangement and contradictions and disputes, and thus affect the forces to normal work.

Communication with mental health care function and the ability to achieve organizational internal motivation.Forces managers through effective information communication, can not only meet the needs of the officers and soldiers to understand and emotion, and the officers and men might also feel happy because of emotional expression, to promote mental health, stimulate the officers and soldiers.In addition, effective communication can also arouse the enthusiasm of the participation of officers and soldiers, improve overall cohesion force.Forces managers faced various character management object, to ensure that the activities in an orderly way, coordinated development, not timely information communication between each other is impossible.

As opposed to a two-way communication is one-way communication, one-way communication refers to the leader pass the word down, subordinate symbolic feedback, such communication not only helpless to do supervision and management, decision makers would discourage working enthusiasm of officers and soldiers and the collective sense of belonging.Part of first-line managers adopted by the imperative of management is a kind of typical one-way communication, managers can't immediately understand the subordinate is correct understanding of communication and information, subordinates the difficulties of execution in the command can't feedback in time.Both sides communication can avoid these disadvantages, can understand the right of communication through the feedback level, improving communication.So, must become a one-way communication into two-way communication.Two-way communication will be more conducive to the promotion of troops close together, motivate officers and men to participate in the enthusiasm of the management, provide more power to the officers and soldiers.In a two-way communication, special attention should be paid to the two-way communication between higher and lower.In a superior position, to consciously approachable, improve the image of each other, to create a harmonious atmosphere of random point, to speak out at a lower level.If the superior random disturbance, accused, criticism, ridicule, makes the two-way communication can't open.Managers to build a two-way communication, the first opinion of subordinate to the concerns and sincere welcome, give a person with sufficient opportunity to speak, to listen more, judge less, help to improve the effectiveness of communication.

The grassroots forces of complex, officers and men from all over the world, have different education and social experience, which could make them have different understanding on the same content.And forces managers tend to notice the differences, thus formed the communication barriers.Different nature of the communication needs to have different ways of communication environment and forces managers to communication according to different objects and contents, time, place and method of choosing the appropriate communication, enterprises to achieve the best communication effect.To different people, in different circumstances to take different ways of communication, they have them they want everything changes with the change of time, condition and object, cannot be mechanically in a fixed model.Such as the policies and regulations and the transmission of the superior orders, directives, want to choose under the serious situation;Understanding of the ideas of personnel, should choose relaxed, casual, and in no other tolerance to task for;To staff thought transformation, in a relatively private occasions, and people thought little fluctuation of;Communicate with outgoing personality, cheerful to hear much, speak little, and introverted, weak communication, want to ask, etc.