This paper seeks to explore how strategic resources in petroleum industry projects are to be best managed and exploited in order to deliver enhanced project performance and sustained business competitiveness. Framed upon the Resource-Based View ('RBV') theory, these resources should be 'Valuable', 'Inimitable', 'Rare' and be able to draw on 'Organisational support' ('VIRO'). Qualitative data were collected from petroleum industry organizations operating in the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman between 2017 and 2019. The analysis shows that at the project level, 'Value' and 'Organisational support' attributes of resources were positively related to competitive advantage and both impacted by dynamic capabilities and innovative environment. However, the 'Rareness' and 'Inimitability' attributes showed less evolution. We also find that at the project level, the main characteristics of organizational resources were that they are 'Valuable', 'Organizationally supported', and that they could be 'Uniquely exploited' while being 'Readily available'. The results suggest a desire by project-oriented organizations to replace the 'Rareness' and 'Inimitability' attributes within VIRO with two alternative attributes, namely 'Unique exploitation' and 'Timely availability' of resources.

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Nowadays, it becomes a fact that knowledge is the number one resource of organizations, and having that knowledge managed and shared effectively gives the organization the competitive advantages among other organizations. Many oil and gas organization believes that having a good systems and environment for knowledge sharing will have positive effect on the learning curve of both individual and organization.In this study the researchers are testing the relationship between the knowledge sharing and employee development and address the key knowledge sharing factors that might have positive relationship with employee effectiveness and so development.An empirical study used to investigate this relationship in two oil and gas companies in United Arab Emirates, a 150 questionnaires were distributed in both companies, it consist of 46 items addressing four factors of knowledge sharing named Organizational culture, Individual Communications skills, Procedural justice, Supervision and feedback. The dependent variable is employee development. 124 responses were valid to use. The analysis were done using the statistical package of social science software (SPSS) and the results showed positive relationship between the global variables (knowledge sharing and employee development) but surprisingly there is one knowledge sharing factor showed no relationship with employee development, it is the one called "Individual Communications skills".At the end of the study the researchers address the limitations of the study and suggest some recommendations for organizations to use in order to improve knowledge sharing which should lead to employee development and accordingly that can give the organization better competitive advantage. Finally the researchers give some suggestions for future research. Keywords: Knowledge sharing · employee performance · Oil industry2 SPE-176764-MS SPE-176764-MS organization type, job status, number of years in organization and number of years on current job. Researchers used a scale range from two (e.g. gender) to six (e.g. education level). The scale is developed by Suliman, (2001). Knowledge sharing variable: the knowledge sharing is a multidimensional variable consist of 4 factors with total questions of 24. Those factors are organizational culture (5 questions), individual communication skills (5 questions), procedural justice (6 questions) and supervision and feedback (5 questions). The 5 point linkert format is used in this study. The respondents were asked to choose from the following responses: 1 for "strongly agree", 2 for "agree", 3 for "Neutral", 4 for "disagree" and 5 for "strongly disagree".Employee development: employee development is the one-dimensional variable and used same scale used for knowledge sharing variable.