Risk & Uncertainty in the Oil & Gas Industry
From the perspective of somebody who has worked in business for more than 30 years, the most profound change during that time has been in the very rate of change itself. In today’s globally competitive world, we face unprecedented levels of risk and uncertainty; when the price of a commodity like crude oil can collapse by 70% in less than 18 months, nobody can expect to survive by relying on instinct and intuition, in a way that might have been possible in the “calmer waters” of the last century. To survive and flourish in this challenging age, business decision-makers need the right tools with which to analyse problems and anticipate and manage the many threats, and indeed, the opportunities, that may emerge.
Traditional forms of financial analysis and planning are not sufficiently flexible to offer much help in these turbulent times – forecasts that focus on the outputs from the system and run to more than 100 rows of data, are too cumbersome to easily test the effects of various kinds of risk events on the firm’s results. The most progressive firms are using more flexible tools that focus on the inputs to the forecast, identifying the key drivers of profit and cash flow and using these drivers to produce the forecast. Using this limited number of key drivers allows decision-makers to more easily test the effect of significant risk events on the company’s financial performance. This kind of sensitivity analysis lets managers build deep insights in to the most important drivers of business performance.
PetroKnowledge has recently conducted a Financial Analysis, Modelling & Forecasting training course that focused on these powerful decision-making tools and incorporated practical workshop sessions that helped the delegates to develop the Excel and modelling skills required to build these models for their own organisations.
For more information on PetroKnowledge training courses, please visit our website (www.petroknowledge.com) or contact us at T: 00971 2 557 7389 / E: [email protected]
