The Quantitative and Qualitative Assessments of Investment Risk in Government Development Projects (Case Study: Joint Oil Fields of Iran and Iraq)

Common energy fields are one of the defining poles of energy diplomacy between countries. Iran's role with 28 common oil and gas fields in the Middle East, the world's fastest energy pole and the largest source of oil and gas, is very decisive. Among Iran's neighbors, Iraq is very important with the largest number of common fields. This study presented a qualitative and quantitative project risk assessment using a risk assessment matrix and the expected monetary value risk analysis to identify the most important risks of joint oil field projects. Accordingly, the two scenarios of the contract for the partnership in the production of the Sepehr and Jafir oil fields are compared with the oil contract for the buyback of the North Azadegan field by calculating the Expected Monetary Value for each Decision Tree Path. As a result, it is observed that by considering the risks obtained from the calculations of the risk assessment matrix in each contract, and also with the equal risk share, the production sharing contract has an expected monetary value equal to 7.228 billion dollars. This option also includes the lowest investment risk for National Oil. Also, by using the risk assessment matrix, we found that political conflicts are the largest share of risk and a deterrent to the development of oil fields, and the willingness of large oil companies to invest in Iraqi oil facilities confirms that the importance of political conflicts is much greater than lack of physical infrastructure risk.