The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Iranian Oil and Gas Industry Planning: A Survey of Business Continuity Challenges

The Covid-19 pandemic has severely affected various aspects of life, and its compounding and cascading impacts have been observed in most industries and firms. The oil and gas (O&G) industry was among the first to experience the impacts as the pandemic began due to the global economic recession and a sharp decline in demand for oil. The pandemic revealed major risk management and business continuity challenges and uncovered some of the vulnerabilities of the O&G industry and its major companies during a prolonged global disaster. Examining and understanding how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the O&G sector in different countries, considering their unique circumstances, can provide important lessons for managing the current and future similar events. This study investigated various impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the O&G industry using Iran’s Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC) as a case study. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with key managers of the company. Qualitative methods, specifically thematic analysis, were used to analyze the data. Findings of this study provide further insights into how the pandemic impacted the operations, risks, and business continuity of the POCG. The results show that the pandemic caused significant operational, financial, and legal impacts by disrupting routine maintenance, reducing the availability of human resources under the public health measures and mobility restrictions, increasing processing and delivery times, increasing costs and decreasing revenues, and delaying contractual obligations.