Decision aiding methodology for developing the Contractual Strategy of complex oil and gas development projects

A development project of a new oil and gas facility starts when the exploration and the appraisal studies estimate the exploitation of the hydrocarbon deposit is economically viable. The complexity and the size of the projects encountered in the industry impose to split them into several pieces, which represent the scope of future contracts. Each scope is then awarded to a contractor with a specific type of contract and selection mode, forming the contractual strategy to adopt in the project. During the contractual strategy selection process, oil companies encounters three recurring difficulties related to: 1) the identification of a reasonable and relevant set of alternatives; 2) the evaluation of potential alternatives, which depends on criteria from different scales and natures; and, 3) the need to substantiate the chosen contractual strategy solution. The research problem is to propose a decision aiding methodology for the development and selection of the most appropriate contractual strategy. It has to be the most performing in terms of cost and schedule, but should also consider the risks associated with these performances. In addition, the interfaces between the different contracts should also be considered, because the collective performance of the whole strategy may be degraded compared to the performance of each individual contract. Thereby, our work seeks to implement both technical and practical solutions to answer on the one hand the question of identification and generation of a relevant set of alternatives, at contracts and contractual strategy levels. On the other hand, to build and implement a system of estimation and evaluation of contractual strategies, allowing to come up with the most performing proposal to the upstream development project.