Business environment - Essay Example

e up with a new image, ‘Beyond Petroleum.’ This and some other campaigns are intended to reduce the bad image the company has developed, that is not very environmentally friendly. The market for petroleum is based on its demand and supply conditions. These conditions are there for every market. The demand and supply help determine the price and the quantity of oil that should be supplied to the world. The major contributor to oil supply in the world is Saudi Arabia. The market in the UK is said to be self sufficient till 2016.

The industry produces around two million barrels of hydrocarbons per day. Even though the country is self sufficient, the oil reserves are declining. According to the article ‘Oil, gas and petroleum: Overview,’ (2006) the oil reserves are mainly in the North Sea and off the coasts of Aberdeen, Suffolk, Norfolk, Liverpool and Morecambe Bay. UK is known for its ability to extract oil in larger quantity from the deep sea by using advanced engineering techniques. UK exports oil in its raw form.

The country is now focusing of making full use of the existing oil fields instead of looking for new smaller fields. The Oil, gas and petroleum: Overview article (2006) provides us with the following figures, the petroleum industry by itself exists of 200 companies who perform different processes including, refining, distribution and marketing. The basic structure of the market is based on two divisions, retail and commercial. The retail side of the structure includes petrol sold from filling stations while the commercial side includes the government and its agencies, industrial and agricultural transporters, power generators etc.

The petroleum industry gives way to thousands of jobs to contractual workers and on a full time basis employs, 150,000 people. According to the Staff Report to the Federal Trade Commission, the industry is controlled by seven companies, five of them are American and the other two are British-Dutch. The American