An oil field development decision made on a flawed spreadsheet can lock an organization into years of underperformance — long after the wells are already producing. Petroleum projects run on capital-intensive, long-horizon economics where a small error in a cash flow model compounds fast. This training course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy is built around that reality: it trains financial analysts to build the Excel models that upstream and downstream investment decisions actually depend on.

Rather than teaching Excel and petroleum economics as separate subjects, the course blends the two through case studies drawn from real oil and gas scenarios — building statistical foundations first, then layering in investment appraisal metrics like NPV, IRR, and payback period, and finishing with a full oil field development model participants construct themselves.

Cost estimation, cash flow forecasting, sensitivity analysis, and scenario planning are woven throughout, giving analysts the grounding to handle uncertainty and regulatory complexity when evaluating oil and gas ventures.

The course is aimed squarely at professionals in energy finance who need to connect technical project realities to sound financial judgment, and walk away able to defend investment decisions with numbers that hold up.

Who Should Attend?

• Oil & gas field engineers, managers, and auditors.
• Financial analysts and supervisors working across upstream and downstream operations.
• Decision-makers and financial modelers who want to sharpen their appraisal skills.
• Energy managers, supervisors, and staff in finance, technology, and project development who need a working grasp of petroleum project economics.

Knowledge and Benefits:

After completing the program, participants will be able to master the following:

• Build dynamic financial models in Excel for petroleum project evaluation.
• Apply investment appraisal tools — NPV, IRR, and payback period — to real upstream and downstream decisions.
• Forecast cash flows and estimate costs across the life of a project.
• Run sensitivity and scenario analysis to assess risk and uncertainty, including price volatility hedging and decision-tree analysis for abandonment options.
• Understand the economic rationale behind oil and gas project evaluation and present findings with confidence to stakeholders.

Module 1: Petroleum Project Economics — Core Concepts and Indicators

• Present value concept, discount factor, and why petroleum economics runs on discounted cash flow.
• Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and payback period as core investment indicators.
• Profit/investment ratio, incremental projects, and the effect of project delay on returns.

Module 2: Cash Flow Fundamentals for Oil & Gas Projects

• Setting up cash-flow calculations and getting familiar with core economic terminology.
• Depreciation methods, loss carry forwards, and sunk costs.
• Inflation, nominal versus real cash flow, and project financing considerations.

Module 3: Statistical Foundations for Financial Analysts

• Descriptive statistics and their applications: mean, median, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis.
• Trend analysis, time series analysis, and representing data sets graphically.
• Scatter diagrams, frequency and histogram distributions, correlation analysis, confidence intervals, and ANOVA.

Module 4: Financial Statement and Ratio Analysis in Oil & Gas

• Introduction to financial statements and ratio analysis applied to the oil and gas industry.
• Ratios as a system, including the pyramid-of-ratios approach.
• Building financial models and cash flow forecasts in Excel.

Module 5: Investment Appraisal and Market Relationships Using Excel

• Investment appraisal using NPV, IRR, and payback, with the relevant Excel functions.
• Modified Internal Rate of Return (MIRR), scenario analysis, and stress testing.
• Examining oil product spreads and the relationships between energy products, and predicting financial distress.

Module 6: Risk and Uncertainty in Petroleum Investment Decisions

• Distinguishing risk from uncertainty, and the expected value concept.
• Decision tree analysis and the farm-out decision.
• Probability analysis and distribution, sensitivity analysis, and Monte Carlo simulation.

Module 7: Building Spreadsheet Calculations Step by Step

• Introduction to spreadsheet-based calculation for project economics.
• Building a simple cash flow and NPV calculation in Excel.
• Applying economic indicators in practice, with guided class discussion.

Module 8: Capstone — Building an Integrated Oil Field Development Model

• Setting up a full integrated economic model for a typical oil field development.
• Running project sensitivity analysis on the selected model.
• Introduction to the Russell Field Model and closing remarks.