Abstract

Iran is among the important oil producers in the world and a member of OPEC, and if it wants to keep its share of oil market, it is important to know when and how to invest in its oil industry. To keep its market share, Iran must not only keep the current production level but also improve it. In order to do this, other OPEC members’ production plan must be reviewed.

In this research, the operation of the OPEC members for investment in the upstream of oil industry has been studied.

Goals:

The goal of this research is to understand the effect of oil price fluctuation on the OPEC members’ decision about the investment in upstream oil industry, to see if their decision flow a program or have a model and what the role of oil price in this model is.

Methodology:

In this research, for each member of OPEC, an econometric model has introduced. It is a BVAR model with two main variables. One of the main variables is the oil price and the other one is numbers of the rigs in each country. The rigs’ numbers is used as a proxy for amount of investment in the upstream.