Effects of ownership and business portfolio on production in the oil and gas industry

Abstract

The Shale Revolution and the two oil crises have overwhelmingly reshaped the petroleum industry in the last decade. Heterogeneity across companies is also a big concern as many multi-product (oil and gas) and multi-segment (upstream and downstream) firms exist, both state-owned and privately-owned. Therefore, a varying coefficient model is introduced to capture the effects of time, ownership, and business portfolio on both productivity and input elasticities to closely observe the fundamental transition, which is further interpreted using decomposition equations. The shape of the production function is indeed firm- and time-variant, which confirms the transition of the industry and the necessity of using the varying coefficient model. The average productivity achieved tremendous growth after the 2007–2009 financial crisis but lost momentum following the 2014 price crash. Finally, privately-owned, gas production and downstream activities are more productive than state-owned, oil production and upstream activities, respectively. Some policy implications are also discussed.