Future Study of Supply Chain in Oil Industry with Scenario Planning Approach

Effective supply chain plays a significant role in the production and distribution of petroleum and petrochemical products in the country. This study seeks to identify key factors and plausible scenarios for the future supply chain of the oil industry.

This research is applied from the point of view of orientation and it is positivist from philosophical point of view and it is a multiple research.For this purpose, the key factors affecting the future of the oil supply chain were identified by reviewing the literature and interviewing the experts and then using these binomial tests were screened. Two GBN and Dematel techniques were used to select the final key forces. The probable scenario was chosen with one of the decision making techniques.

Using GBN and DEMATEL techniques, two key forces of external sanctions and macroeconomic policies related to strengthening were selected for mapping the scenarios. Based on these two key forces, the four scenarios of closed supply chain, fragile supply chain, robust supply chain and dynamic supply chain were developed. Each of these scenarios represents a situation for the future of oil supply chain. According to the criteria of conformity with internal trends, conformity with international trends, probability based on reality, and consistency with current data, closed supply chain scenario was selected as the most probable scenario.

Dynamic supply chain shows the best situation in terms of reducing external sanctions and appropriate reinforcement policies and on the other hand, the closed supply chain describes an isolated and vulnerable system to threats.