Production Sharing Contract (PSC) is one of the petroleum agreements mode that
are being utilized in many parts of the world in enabling exploration, development
and production of the petroleum resources at the respective locations. It was first
introduced in Indonesia in 1966, and followed by Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and
Brunei. One of interesting aspects of PSC management is the operatorship
transferhandling when a PSC is nearing its expiry. When the time come, the
current PSC contractor as operator has the option to relinquish it to the host
authority to be handed over to other operator, farm it out to the other PSC
contractor to reduce the risk exposure or continue operating under a new PSC
terms. The most challenging will be to relinquish the operatorship to another
operator whereby several complexities will need to be adequately addressed to
ensure benefit preservation to the host authority, incoming operator and
outgoing operator. Therefore there is a need to adhere to key factors or enablers
to administer the operatorship transfer exercise if it occurs in the near future. The
key enablers would be able to address the operatorship transfer exercise
effectively with the objective to alleviate complications to the host authority,
outgoing operator and incoming operator. With the emphasized in the PETRONAS
Procedure & Guideline for Upstream Activities together with three case studies,
this paper proposed several key enablers to be considered for a PSC successful
operatorship transfer which is human resources, data management, asset
reliability and integrity management, supply chain management and good
relationship between parties. With identified key factors, it is hoped that any PSC
operatorship transfer will be able to be managed smoothly and will ensure
benefits to all parties concerned.