Internationalization of Statoil: An evalution of architectual principles

Abstract

Statoil has many years of experience as an operator on the Norwegian continental shelf, but how can it make sure this competence is used wisely in other locations?Statoil has gone through major changes the last few years, both structural and organizational. Becoming an international energy operator requires a management system that is extensive enough to cover all business processes, without the system itself becoming too hard to manage. Statoil has solved this through dividing the entire business into several processes and appointing owners to each process. These owners are responsible for keeping the process descriptions and requirements up to date and in accordance with best practices.Even with these process owners it is difficult to maintain documents that are as easy to use in every country Statoil is an operator in as in Norway. This requires the documents to be specific on important issues, but also allow practices that work in other geographical areas and other cultures. This can be as simple as being available in the right language, but also as complex as to guide drilling operations in different climates and soil/water types.This thesis takes a good look at the top governing documentation in Statoil and proposes changes to the architectural principles that are in some way not quite right for international operatorship. These proposals are found through interviews with key personnel in the different process areas, in addition to examining the governing documents themselves and analyzing the organizational structure in Statoil.Challenges have been found in all the process areas looked in to, and surprisingly, lack of principles is a problem in some of the areas. Making sure the right principles exist in the top documentation force employees to conform to a right way of doing business , namely the Statoil way.Other principles prevent employees in other countries to respond quickly to situations that arise, because the system is too strict.Statoil is going through a process of updating all governing documentation. Some of the proposal made in this thesis may already be implemented, but this is a result of the thesis being a snapshot of StatoilHydro in September 2009. The biggest part of this thesis was to research the management system and to gather information. Because of that there was little time left to investigate the newest documentation when it was released in November. The goal of the thesis was, and still is, to raise awareness on potential challenges in the governing of Statoil as a global operator.