Making the Numbers Work: A Training Course in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Economics
1Summary
Behind every decision to drill, develop, or walk away from an oil or gas project sits a set of numbers — discounted cash flow, fiscal terms, breakeven costs — that determine whether the project actually makes sense. This training course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy is built around those numbers, giving engineers, managers, and finance staff a shared language for evaluating exploration and production projects.
Participants work through valuation methods, contract and fiscal systems, and the effects of inflation, tariffs, and exchange rates on project economics, before closing with a dedicated look at how gas economics differs from oil. By the end, delegates can read a project's numbers and judge, with confidence, whether they add up.
2Objectives and target group
Who Should Attend
- Engineers, directors, and commercial and accounting staff working in oil and gas.
- Ambitious professionals looking to build solid economic-analysis skills.
- Anyone who needs to understand how exploration and production projects earn money.
What You Will Be Able to Do
- Evaluate a project's economic viability using the discounted cash flow (DCF) method.
- Read and compare oil contracts and financial systems.
- Apply project evaluation and screening measures with confidence.
- Balance uncertainty and risk, and manage sensitivity and post-tax factors.
- Assess how inflation, tariffs, and breakeven costs affect financial performance.
- Apply the basic principles of gas economics.
3Course Content
Module 1: Making the Investment Case
- Evaluating project viability using the discounted cash flow (DCF) method.
- Economic analysis techniques and the indexes used to compare projects.
Module 2: Contracts and Fiscal Systems in Oil and Gas
- Oil contracts and the financial systems that govern them.
- The legal framework behind exploration and production economics.
Module 3: Costs, Tariffs and the Breakeven Point
- Breakeven costs and tariffs, and how they shape project decisions.
- Decommissioning costs and their place in the overall economic picture.
Module 4: Navigating Inflation, Exchange Rates and Risk
- The effect of inflation and exchange rates on project economics.
- Analyzing decisions under uncertainty, and managing sensitivity and post-tax factors.
Module 5: Turning Numbers into Decisions
- Using management information to support informed investment decisions.
Module 6: Gas Economics — A Different Set of Rules
- How gas economics differs from oil economics.
- Basic principles for evaluating gas projects.