Date
10-16-2025
Department
Graduate School of Business
Degree
Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
Chair
Alexander Averin
Keywords
Disruption, executive leadership, investment, risk, supply chain management
Disciplines
Business
Recommended Citation
Everton, Michael E., "Disruption in International Oil Supply Chains" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7541.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7541
Abstract
The specific problem addressed by this study was the possible failure of globally integrated oil and energy supply chains in the Gulf Coast region of the United States when responding to operational disruptions, resulting in the possible inability of firms to balance risks and investments. The research, using a flexible qualitative case study, examined industry executive management perspectives on how energy supply chains balance risk and investment due to unanticipated operational risk events. This study's key findings and conclusions from literature and the research are that strategic global energy supply chains continuously seek aggressive investment in agility, resilience, and restorative capacity, and apply this in both global and domestic operations. Business operational factors must be seen from a larger perspective, and local markets are not insular from global influence on volatility and disruption, causing firms to structure for risk based on firm culture, expertise, and specialization. Themes that emerge are that the industry is long-term focused, with risk planning integrated into all the various industry segments through investment, financing, and project planning. Additional themes indicating investments tend to focus on the long-term horizons with variable development, partnering, diversification, and production to ensure future revenue streams. The implications of this study are that firms need to structure business operations to ensure revenue streams and sourcing to limit volatility and disruption in support of long-term risk and investment. The study provides recommendations on how industry executives can leverage supply chain analytics and robustness to mitigate risk and investment due to unanticipated operational risk events.
