Strategies of Oil National Companies Appeared in World Oil and Gas Markets

World energy market especially nonrenewable energies markets have experienced significant changes in recent years. Main portion of conventional oil and gas resources belongs to national oil companies. The purposes of NOCs are profit maximizing, redistribution of wealth in society, energy diplomacy, energy security, and national economic development. These purposes affect principle functions of NOCs to protect national wealth. Thence, establishing a trade-off between commercial and non-commercial goals to reach the best performance in a long term basis is one of the main concerns. Considering growing trend of energy consumption in oil and gas producing countries and welfare costs increase, serious difficulties is predictable for most NOCs in Persian Gulf, Russia, southern America to cover oil demand increase in the United States, China, and emerging governments in Asia. It sounds like that investigating the possibility of entrance to downstream industries should be one of the main concerns of NOCs in international levels. As well as their economic advantages, it can act as leverage for avoiding international pressures.