Risk Assessment of the Oil and Gas Company's Portfolio: the Geological Exploration Project Study

This paper is dedicated to the risk assessment of the oil and gas company's exploration project portfolios. This paper presents a risk assessment of exploration projects at the initial stage, and proposes a methodology for project portfolio formation and risk assessment of oil and gas companies' portfolios. The paper reveals the topic of various methods of risk assessment of geological exploration projects, and also provides a review of literature on the experience of other researchers on methods of forming portfolios of oil and gas projects. There are also compared various methods of risk assessment and was made the decision to exclude minor projects from the optimal portfolio. In this paper the author carries out financial and economic evaluation of projects, identifies effective projects by target economic indicators and analyzes the sensitivity of projects to changes in significant factors. The researcher performs project risk assessment using Monte Carlo simulation modeling and identifies effective portfolios of projects with different objectives and constraints. The result of this paper is the determination of effective portfolios of exploration projects based on a separate assessment of projects and taking into account the risk assessment of portfolios of such projects. This study will be useful for investors and project managers whose activities are related to oil and gas companies, especially exploration projects during the Search and Evaluation phase.