Key Risks Companies Face in Petroleum Investment and Operations Bud Coote and Karl V. Hopkins ISBN: 978-1-61977-442-1 Cover photo: Reuters/Ako Rasheed. The Bai Hassan oil facility inside Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Iraq after an attack by militants in July 2016. This report is written and published in accordance with the Atlantic Council Policy on Intellectual Independence. The authors are solely responsible for its analysis and recommendations. The Atlantic Council and its donors do not determine, nor do they necessarily endorse or advocate for, any of this report’s conclusions. January 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 2 Rule of Law ..................................................................................................................................... 2 Sanctity of Contracts .................................................................................................................. 4 Infrastructure Risk ........................................................................................................................ 5 Personnel Security ....................................................................................................................... 12 Political Criticism and Reputational Risks ........................................................................... 13 Financial Risks ............................................................................................................................... 15 Corruption ....................................................................................................................................... 17 Cyberattacks .................................................................................................................................. 19 Populism .......................................................................................................................................... 21 Conclusions and Implications .................................................................................................. 23 About the Authors ....................................................................................................................... 24 Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................... 24 Key Risks Companies Face in Petroleum Investment and Operations EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report is a collaboration between Dentons and the and risks of government-imposed sanctions, which Atlantic Council that provides analysis on the array of can accentuate market swings before the markets risks and uncertainties faced by international energy can self-correct. As investors increasingly look firms investing in and operating energy projects toward developing economies for resources, they worldwide. It focuses on lessons learned from a variety face questions about the rule of law and sanctity of of experiences and offers risk mitigation options. contract in countries with unproven track records. Lessons from past expropriations, revolutions, and Risk and uncertainty pervade decisions on petroleum expulsions of companies in Mexico, Iran, Libya, and investments and operations, raising the stakes for Venezuela still reverberate. companies committing to multibillion dollar contracts often extending twenty or more years. The array of risk “Resource nationalism” also continues in the form factors is diverse, requiring multidisciplinary analysis of increased government shares of oil profits and to decipher. New risks arise and others expand, raising expanded local content requirements for host country the breadth and depth of challenges facing energy equipment and services companies. In the case of operators. “The risk model has changed. It used to many developing economies, oil wealth has proved be that the risk of physically getting hydrocarbons difficult to manage, and the revenues become a out of the ground profitably was the principal driver. source of power for authoritarian rulers, corruption, But now it requires understanding, analyzing, and and instability. These ingredients are commonly balancing a host of integrated issues and addressing associated with failed states or failing states, which them with a holistic approach that involves everyone do not represent sound investments. from board members through laborers, contractors, and subcontractors.”1 Some of the relatively new risk factors companies face include terrorism, cyberattacks, and reputational To share these risks, there are trends toward the risks caused, for example, by political criticism from consolidation of major international oil companies nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other into supermajors, growth in state-owned companies private sources. A major cyberattack on western including national oil companies, and greater Ukraine’s power grid in December 2015 provided a collaboration on major projects worldwide including vivid view of the widespread damage cyber warfare joint projects between international oil companies can inflict. and national oil companies. “There is no silver bullet approach to risk. Every country presents a different Infrastructure and personnel attacks are long-enduring environment with different challenges. And companies risks with additional threats from terrorists and cyber will have different appetites for risk and different warfare. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report experiences and resources to manage them.”2 on infrastructure vulnerability issues during the Iran- Iraq war and a Statoil report on its investigation of Uncertainty fuels market volatility and vice versa. The the terrorist attack on the In Amenas gas processing energy industry is prone to cycles as major investments facility in Algeria showed the dangerous threats ebb and flow with price changes, concerns about militants pose to infrastructure and personnel security. future demand growth, new environmental regulations, Climate change concerns and related policy adjustments could alter the calculus for hydrocarbon 1 Karl V. Hopkins, partner and global chief security officer, investment and development, although such risks are Dentons, from an Atlantic Council Global Energy Center likely to be gradual. Populism also adds to political conference with Dentons’ security experts, November 28, 2016. risk and uncertainty and can have dramatic impacts 2 Arkadiusz Krasnodębski, Head of the Energy and Natural Resources practice team in Poland and Europe, Dentons, from on the investment decisions and finances of energy an Atlantic Council Global Energy Center conference with companies. Dentons’ security experts, November 28, 2016. ATLANTIC COUNCIL 1 Key Risks Companies Face in Petroleum Investment and Operations INTRODUCTION This report will examine key risk factors that influence as a risk that cuts across many of the eight categories energy investment and operations worldwide and of risk listed above. This organization allows us to drill identify possible ways to mitigate risks and reduce more deeply into the key risks. In fact, they are all uncertainty. Their impact has risen in importance in interrelated and need to be appreciated and treated recent years as energy companies have invested in as such in any effective risk management program. more developing countries, violence has grown more widespread, environmental and human rights issues Various case studies including the examination of the have generated political criticism of companies, and February 24, 2006, terrorist attack on Abqaiq in Saudi oil prices have fallen. Arabia; the January 16, 2013, terrorist attack on In Amenas in Algeria; the security approach to the Baku- The report will look at eight categories of risk: rule of Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline constructed between April law, sanctity of contract, infrastructure risk, personnel 2003 and June 2006; pipeline disruptions in Nigeria; security, political criticism and reputational risks, the Iran-Iraq war from September 1980 to August financial risks, corruption, and cyberattacks. Climate 1988; the first Persian Gulf war with Iraq that began change-related risk is addressed primarily as a financial in August 1990; and the conflict in Iraq beginning in risk, and the risk posed by populist movements in March 2003 will be examined for lessons. petroleum-producing countries is treated separately RULE OF LAW Adherence to rule of law is critical to support confidence stakeholders in the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) and investments in long-term, high capital-cost projects agreed that their relationship would be based on Swiss in the petroleum industry, but it is undermined by law rather than Turkish law.4 poor governance. Risks are often most significant in developing countries with a high dependence on “Arbitration rights offer an added degree of protection oil and gas revenues, weak public institutions, and a to companies, but this also can be undermined when poor record in enforcing the rule of law. A country’s dealing with a government that does not enforce high dependence on oil and gas revenues provides a the outcome. An important means of strengthening stronger incentive for governments to try to improve the role of arbitration is to have a government-to- its share of revenues through