navigating the crude cycle: 10 strategic actions for national oil companies

Navigating the

Crude Cycle10 Strategic Actions for National

Oil Companies

Copyright © 2015 Accenture All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2015 Accenture All rights reserved. 2

10 Strategies to Ride the

Oil Price Slide

Hard times have prompted national oil

companies to adopt quick fixes to tide

over the crisis—spending cuts, hiring

freezes and postponed maintenance.

But such across-the-board hasty

cutbacks can weaken them over time.

Accenture recommends national oil

companies leverage the low-oil-price

period to adopt 10 strategic actions to

drive costs down and efficiency higher.



1. Reset partnerships with core suppliers.

Identify strategic suppliers in key work categories and renegotiate long-term contracts to

strategic partnerships for increased resilience during a crisis.



2. Optimize industry-wide

cost structure.

Work more collaboratively with local

companies for better local content

development—such as through

efficient digital exchanges among the

supplier ecosystem—to structurally

reduce the cost base.



3. Improve collaboration

for effective execution.

Don’t work as a pilot project—share

best practices and benchmark

vendor performance to avoid cost

and schedule overruns.



4. Share logistics assets and resource capacity.

Consolidate the demand and share logistics assets, infrastructure and resources across

operators to achieve large savings.



5. Balance

timing of asset

maintenance

with opportunity

loss.

Execute preventative

maintenance in low-

price periods for

increased availability of

low-cost equipment,

service providers and

contract labor.



6. Adopt digital technology to boost productivity.

Invest in digital technology in the field that can transform the way people work and help

realize operational cost benefits earlier than competitors.



7. Consolidate internal support functions to lower cost.

Consolidate functions to ride on IT investments and standardize IT infrastructure through

the software-as-a-service approach.



8. Get smarter

about people

management.

Leverage innovative

solutions to increase

the efficiency of training

while optimizing costs.



9. Reassess

portfolios to deliver

greater value.

Revisit the viability of all

expansions, especially those

into unconventional plays, and

identify and quantify operational

risks to determine

nonperforming assets and

review their future.



10. Develop cost transparency capability across the

asset portfolio.

Practice cost transparency of assets to increase sharing of cost optimization ideas

across assets.



Conclusion

While oil price may remain

unpredictable, national oil

companies that leverage

this time to engineer new

capabilities will emerge as

leaders. They could also

consider investing in training

people and implementing

digital solutions to improve

productivity and profitability.



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oil-companies.aspx

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navigating the crude cycle: 10 strategic actions for national oil companies

Technology

lower cost

cost base

strategic partnerships

operational cost benefits

strategic suppliers

cost transparency capa

local companies

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