Strategic Growth in Oil and Gas: A Capabilities Perspective

Abstract

Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), one of the most important National Oil Companies (NOC) in the world, is growing in every sense, as the State of Kuwait is seeking to boost its oil production capacity by 2040, in line with the new approved strategy of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation. This growth into the future entails a shift from primary extraction to more complex settings, where new fields are produced simultaneously with others submitted to water flooding, EOR and Steam Injection, in what constitutes one of the biggest challenges ever faced by the company, due to the short timelines involved. The company has a variety of technological partners that include International Oil Companies (IOC), to further support the 2040 strategy of the corporation. This strategic growth vision, not exempted of an increasing breath of challenges, is accompanied by a focused effort in building new technical capabilities in the personnel, and in gradually transforming the way the training plans shape the professional profiles and set the paths for ensuring the specialized skills and expertise that will be needed. This paper describes how KOC is collaborating with an IOC, for uplifting and accelerating the training of its personnel, with the aim of enabling the availability of critical expertise needed to ensure production targets. Selected examples will detail how this cooperation NOC-IOC has been fruitful in enhancing competencies and training workflows. The teams involved from both sides of the spectrum experienced interesting challenges, and did not shy away from applying tactics of management of change to support the evolving talent development ecosystem. An emphasis will be placed in describing why elements like cultural nuances, corporate legacy, communication, alignment and integration are considered key in the implementation of the training strategies. With a well-established KOC competency-based training scheme, and after several years of fruitful exchanges with the IOC, the uplifts achieved in talent development schemes have shaped a transformation journey, with specific results worth sharing.

Strategic Drift and Organizational Culture in Oil and Gas Company of Nigeria

“…Thakur, Hale and AlSaleh (2018) also discovered that a trans-active or generative approach is likely to be used by successful companies with a supportive culture. Collaboration between distinct organizations is a route with many possibilities, not excluded from difficulties due to the natural distinctions between the distinct corporate cultures and organizations (Capello, Dashti, Al-Khamees, Mohammed & De Sousa, 2018). Likewise, Nimfa and Buruche (2014) also advanced that management must equip the organization with suitable new technologies for strategic planning implementation which will lead to the attainment of organizational efficiency when the strategic planning framework is designed in the enterprise.…”