| The oil, "the blood" of modern industry and the strategic material of importance, concerns the national economy and security. Issues related to oil always become hot topics attracting wide public attention. Particularly, the monopoly of petroleum industry and oil market by "oil giants" engaging in integrated businesses of upstream and downstream have led to the appeal for breaking the monopoly. Why a mode of integrated development has developed in petroleum industry? And why competitions in the oil market have developed into competitions of integrated industrial chain of oil companies? At present, the research and answers are mostly made within the field of political economics through using concepts, analyzing cause of act and introducing cases. By comparison, systematic and in-depth researches in the field of industrial economics are very few. And even fewer is the study on value distribution along petroleum industrial chain and its influence on oil companies'choice for integrated business. Therefore existing studies are less persuasive. This article, through analyzing petroleum industrial chain, argues the theory of unbalanced value distribution in upstream and downstream businesses along the chain. Based on the theory, the author utilizes multidisciplinary theories to make a systematic study on cause, efficiency, and strategic choice for oil companies in seeking for integrated business in order to provide a decision-making support to further improve integrated development in China. The theme is of greatly theoretical and practical significance.Along oil industrial chain, upstream, midstream and downstream businesses are distinct by typical features. The competitive advantages of an oil company depends on not only its own value chain and value it has created, but also the position it holds along the industrial chain and the role it plays. This article, starting from the basic structure of petroleum industrial chain, makes an all-around and systematic analysis of differences in value creation and value distribution from the perspective of technical and economic features of upstream and downstream businesses, unveils the rule of extremely unbalanced distribution of value in upstream and downstream businesses. The article also analyzes the limited role of governmental intervention and modern futures market in the value distribution of the petroleum industrial chain, points out an important cause that leads a company to choose the strategy of integrated development is to suit the unbalanced value distribution along the petroleum industrial chain. And by implementing such a strategy, the company develops an accordingly and unique investment and profit-making structure. In recent decades, the profit structure of international oil majors is as follows,70% in upstream business of exploration and development,20% in downstream business of refining and marketing, and 10% in chemical and other businesses. And the investment structure has a similar percentage.On the issue of integrated development of international oil majors, the author reviews and summarizes the evolution of integrated development of international oil majors and the method of improving their integrated business structure. The author studies the background and method of oil majors developing their integrated business and, particularly, makes an analysis of the special role of M & A in developing integrated business. The author also systematically summarizes the efficiency of integrated development by case study. Originally, the author studies the game of integrated development of oil companies, which provides a supporting mode for decision-making on integrated or non-integrated development.On the issue of integrated development of domestic oil companies, the author, from the perspective of historical materialism, makes a complete analysis of background and basis of integrated business development of CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC, the evolution and the efficiency of implementing the strategy of integrated development and particularly organization and management system and internal operational mechanism of integrated business. Meanwhile, on the macro level, the article probes into the barrier to and potential problems of integrated development. Therefore, the article is practical and forward-looking and has special reference to governments and companies in decision-making.The study on the comparison of integrated development of domestic and international oil companies is the highlight of this article. The article presents a benchmarking analysis of integrated development of three domestic oil majors, namely CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC, and its international counterparts, discovers competitive advantages of each company and points out weaknesses of domestic oil companies. The article provides a set of indexes for comparison and analysis in the field of cause, aim, business structure, scale, internationalization, development pattern and route, operational capacity and efficiency, and draws some valuable conclusion on the basis of a large number of data. For example, oil product trading and marketing volume of international oil companies is generally more than their oil processing volume, while their oil processing volume is more than their oil production. Due to different development background and route, the business structure of upstream and downstream of domestic oil companies is different from their international counterparts. Although different business structures are good in their own way, generally, advantages of business structures of international oil majors exceed disadvantages. Comparing with international oil majors, domestic oil companies are lagging behind in terms of integrated operational capacity and efficiency level. After summarizing the rule of integrated development, experience of international oil companies and systematically analyzing the current development of domestic oil companies and their problems and shortcomings, the author studies strategies and tactics of integrated development of Chinese oil companies. The article argues that the character of three Chinese oil companies is clearly defined as the national oil company on the governmental level and integrated development should be maintained. the strategy of three Chinese oil companies to improve integrated operation and management need to focus on following points:firstly, focusing on core business and building up a scientific and reasonable structure of producing, refining and marketing; secondly, reforming system and mechanism and improving guarantee system for integrated development; thirdly, improving operational pattern and enhancing integrated management of neighboring business units along the industrial chain. At the same time, oil companies must face differences in upstream cooperation and downstream cooperation, choose right cooperative mode and effectively evade risks.
|
PDF Full Text Request