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Case Study

Norsk Hydro: Bloc 34

By William A. Fischer and Andrew C. Boynton

7 pages

April 2005

Reference: IMD-3-1282

In 2002, the Norwegian energy giant Norsk Hydro faced a looming investor relations crisis: Bloc 34, the potential site for a big oil find in Angola, was found to be dry. Hydro had made a serious investment in Bloc 34, and now needed to recover in the eyes of the investment community. Somehow, top management would have to convincingly explain the company’s failure to discover oil to the financial markets. If they could not explain it, and maintain the financial community’s confidence, Hydro’s stock could plummet. Norsk Hydro needed to respond competently and fast, and senior management understood that this problem was too critical to leave to conventional approaches. Hydro, however, was rich in heritage, unwieldy, and traditional, with a strong engineering culture and a decidedly Nordic consensus-driven approach to decisions. Creating the sort of team that could deliver competently and fast would require an entirely new way of doing business. This case describes the team that Hydro created and the way in which they worked.

Keywords

Project Management, Offshore Petroleum Exploration

Settings

2002

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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