Abstract
In recent years, private oil and gas companies have to deal with various obstacles. Those include oil and gas prices volutilities, procurement delays and cost surges of material and equipment, human resource shortages, so called resource nationalism, and severe competition with national oil and gas companies. Some private companies are focusing on deepwater exploration and development, natural gas exploration and development with liquefaction (LNG) plants and unconventional oil and gas such as oil sands and shale gas, which need high level of technologies as well as know-how other than oil and gas exploration and development, such as liquefaction and marketing. However, private oil and gas companies might have to step further, since some national oil and gas companies tend to be aggressive to catch up private oil and gas companies in some areas such as deepwater, which could make competition even severer.
