The main purpose of this communication is to identify and assess five potential channels of value creation through e-business implementation. The first channel, which is somewhat ambiguous, is the existence of positive externalities in the industries using networks. The capacity of the network increases at a rate equal to when 2 2 C - C the number of subscribers on the network (n) increases and hence, gives n 1 + n oil markets for procurement, old materials and final products more liquidity and more transparency. But, in the same time, information becomes more abundant on the network requiring highly skilled people and new technologies to process the information.
The second channel is the decreasing cost of telecommunication in term of bandwidth, data storing and the increasing capacity of information processing (Moore's law) which allow oil companies to converge toward zero paper in the value chain with a payback between 9 and twelve months. The third channel is the decreasing of the logistic costs mainly in the retail. The fourth channel is the modification of the traditional channels of distribution. An oil company can for instance sell electricity if she has a client oriented website that gives consumer the amount of his bill at any time. The last channel is the portfolio diversification through the investment in an electronic exchange. This channel does not add value directly but gives the opportunity to process the information of the e-market and publish statistical data and forecasts on the web. Special attention will be given to oil and gas companies.
In October 1999, Texaco created a new position of Vice president of e-business. In the same time, BP created a corporate team to explore e-procurement opportunities, while Shell established with Commerce One an e-marketplace for the energy and chemicals industries.
Nobody can really reject the idea that e-business has became one of the new fashions of our old oil and gas industry. The e-business has created such new opportunities that some specialists (Oil & gas Journal, August 2001) have imagined a kind of ready made process of e-transformation for the oil and gas companies.
Our objective is not to deal with the e-transformation of the oil and gas companies, but to assess some sources of value creation through e-business implementation. However, before going deeply into those sources of value creation, we need to highlight the challenging aspect of the e-business for the oil and gas companies.
What Will be the The answer to this question is obviously very easy. The real growth of the oil and gas industry Real Growth of the Oil and Gas during the future years will be less then the real growth of the world GDP. Indeed, we need to take Industry During into account the energy efficiency which has became less than one i