What fuels oil company risk?
This article has a simple research question: what determines the risks of oil producing companies listed in Australia and the United States, and are there any differences between their risk attitudes? A literature review is used to develop an integrated theory of company risk that is validated using a hand-collected database covering active oil and gas production companies in Australia and the United States. Risk in both countries proved to be a function of company risk propensity and risk management, which each had a small number of deep-seated drivers spread across company structure, governance and performance. These common risk-related features between companies in geographically remote countries point to the complexity of achieving portfolio diversification.