Recently, I attended a management workshop and various corporate scholars and managers treated us to a discussion and it was quite enriching especially with me having a science back ground. One of the key discussions that were had is about the analysis of the petroleum market from the perspective of rule making.

We talked about 5 eras in the oil market and dominations by major powers. Well briefly, during the post 1970 era, the “Seven Sisters” dominated the market. Exxon, Mobil, shell, BP, Chevron, Texaco and gulf oil. Seven sisters meant the 7 sat down, discussed and signed a document that they will dominate the oil market, evidently, they became one of the most powerful world lobby groups. After the 1970s, OPEC gained dominance over the oil market. OPEC dominance saw the demise of the 3 sisters.

This decade, in the oil world, we are looking at the emergence of a New 7 sisters (Financial Times, 11March 2007) Saudi Aramco, Gazprom(Russia), CNPC (China), NIOC (IRAN), PdVSA (Venezuela), Petrobras (BRAZIL), Petronas (Malaysia). Interesting fact when comparing the new 7 to the old 7 is that the new 7 are all GOVERNMENT owned and all Oil producing Nations.

The trend now is that for gains from oil markets to have a positive impact directly on the people who own the resource, government must own the oil exporting and processing companies. This is the driving mechanism behind the new 7. The old 7 were private companies owned by group of wealth individuals making distribution of oil gains uneven.

With that small discussions, I thought about what Sir Micheal had done with the introduction of Petromin, the private oil arm of the government, It would seem that Sir Micheal had done an excellent job again for the people of PNG to control their oil rather then let others dictate.

Em tingting tasol blo mi lo Petromin, I notice in the papers today (21/05/2007) that OC has taken onboard the petromin issue. I hope they know what they are doing and not another lot of witch hunt.

Cheers
kolwan