Swot Analysis

CONTENT

BACKGROUND OF COMPANY------------------------------------- 2

SWOT ANALYSIS------------------------------------------------

BACKGROUND OF COMPANY

Petroliam Nasional Bhd, or Petronas, operates as a state-owned entity controlling Malaysia's oil and gas resources. The company and its subsidiaries are involved in nearly every aspect of the industry including upstream exploration, oil and gas production, downstream oil refining, marketing and distributing petroleum products, gas processing, gas transmission pipeline network operations, liquefied natural gas (LNG) marketing, and petrochemical manufacturing and marketing. Petronas has also diversified into shipping, automotive engineering, and property investment. During 2003, Malaysia's crude oil reserves were 3.2 billion barrels while its natural gas reserves reached 87.5 trillion standard cubic feet. Through its international activities, the country has access to additional reserves of 3.71 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Petronas was not the first company to extract oil or gas in Malaysia. Oil was first found in what is now Malaysia at the end of the 19th century, and in 1910 Royal Dutch/ Shell, then as now one of the majors--the small group of leading private oil companies--first drilled for oil in Sarawak, then a British colony. It was still the only oil company in the area in 1963, when the Federation of Malaya, having achieved independence from Britain six years before, absorbed Sarawak and Sabah, both on the island of Borneo, and became Malaysia. The authorities in the two new states retained their links with Royal Dutch/Shell, which brought Malaysia's first offshore oil field onstream in 1968.

Meanwhile the federal government turned to Esso, Continental Oil, and Mobil, licensing exploration off the state of Trengganu, in the Malay Peninsula, the most populous region and the focus of federal power. By 1974, however, only Esso was still in the area. It made its first discoveries of natural...