Mantua Should Be Blogging

Very good points Mantua, you should start your own blog, seriously. Cheers.

mantua has left a new comment on your post "Fair Rebuttals":

Dali

Indonesia preceded Malaysia in the use of production sharing contracts and produces much more oil. Pertamina, by all accounts, should have been far more successful than Petronas. It did'nt because:

1) it did not have the technical skills & vision to venture out to become a fully functional oil explorer & producer in its own right (unlike Petronas);

2) large parts of its income disappeared into private coffers of staff, managers & directors alike;

3) whatever was left & returned to the govnt (billions) disappeared into the ex-President's overseas accounts.

As for Statoil, I am uncertain about its income source. It could be the state royalties which are much less the the lion's share of PSCC's profit oil. So any comparison on financial perforamce is probably of little use.

Statoil may well have been favoured in Norway's allocation of exploration blocks (much like Petronas in Malaysia) but would have to compete on a level playing field on overseas venture,like Petronas.

I do not subscribe to the public vilification of Petronas as the large majority of the issues raised are the responsiblity of the government, not Petronas. However, the latter's overall performance rates no more than a B- because:

1. it has failed to harness the skills & enterprise of the Malaysian population because of its ethnically biased hiring policies, which cannot be totally blamed on the govnmt;

2. its liking for sponsorship of big-time events which have little pay-back value e.g. sponsorship of F1 racing teams which generate a lot of overseas advertisement exposure but for what purpose? Petronas gains little from overseas exposure as it has no direct sales outlets, unlike other oil majors. Do you see Statoil or other national oil agencies spending so heavily on adverts?