Accounting for the expenses of the stages of oil research and exploration and its role in improving revenues for crude oil companies

An analytical survey of the opinions of a sample of accountants and administrators in a company (Taq Taq Operating Company) for oil in Erbil Governorate - Kurdistan Region

Abstract

The research dealt with one of the important topics that received great attention in the field of accounting in general and in the field of accounting for oil costs in particular, which is the topic of methods for recording the expenses of the stages of oil research and exploration, at a time when contributions and research efforts were focused on searching for procedures and factors of success of these methods Which was often based on traditional discussions, by focusing on the differentiation between registration methods and the assumption of calculating costs and risks for each of them, despite the importance of such discussions in understanding how accountants work and the preference procedures in adopting each of these methods in oil companies as it is the best for the work of companies oil organizations. However, it does not express the specificity of each of these methods, and then reveals the foundations of their advantage based mainly on maximizing the revenues of the crude oil companies.

Based on this, the research aims to measure the contribution of methods for recording the expenses of the stages of oil research and exploration in improving revenues for crude oil companies, within a framework that simulates the reality of local organizations on the one hand and embodies their available applicable accounting practices on the other hand. The research was conducted in the crude oil industry sector by adopting personal interviews and surveying the opinions of a sample of accountants in crude oil companies operating in the Erbil Governorate - Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The first axis included (15) questions that embodied the contents of the methods of recording the expenditures of the stages of oil research and exploration and their practices, which were measured into three methods: (revenue cost method, total cost method, and successful efforts method) for each of them (5) questions, while the third axis included (10) questions about the contents of the revenues of oil companies Crude, with the aim of identifying the methods of recording the expenses of the stages of oil research and exploration, and the extent of their contribution to improving the revenues of the researched organizations. A set of statistical tools were adopted to test the study's hypotheses using the Rasa program and its diagnosis. The research reached a set of conclusions, the most important of which was, the existence of a significant effect of the methods of recording the expenses of the stages of oil research and exploration in improving the revenues of the oil companies in the organization, the study sample, and the most effective method is the total cost (capital) method, and based on that, some proposals were indicated, the most important of which is the necessity Enhancing the organization's interest in the study sample in analyzing the total (capital) cost related to the work of oil companies and studying it to find out the contents that can be benefited from in the future.