Uncertainties and Future Scenarios of Iran's Crude Oil and Its Economic Implications for 2035 Horizon

Today's world conditions with features such as uncertainty,volatility, complexity and ambiguity have created challenges for the future of crude oil. Therefore, it is necessary to use Futures study methods in order to be prepared for any kind of event and changes ahead. Accordingly, this study has been conducted with the aim of identifying the effective uncertainties in order to formulate future scenarios for the position of crude oil in the Iranian economy.

The present study applies a mixed methodology to formulate future crude oil scenarios, namely, environmental scanning to identify the driving forces, cross-impact analysis to measure the importance of drivers,  consensus index to measure critical uncertainties and the global business network method to develop scenarios. In order to explain and extract the factors affecting the position of crude oil in the country's economy, the initial list of effective drivers was extracted. The statistical population of this study included experts in the field of oil, energy economics and futures studies.

The findings of this study include the identification of drivers, the uncertainty and the mapping of scenarios. Based on the results of environmental scanning, 35 pioneers in the fields of economics, politics, technology, social and environmental were identified. According to the findings of this study, the three drivers of Iran's international interaction model, the share of renewable energy in the global energy portfolio and crude oil prices, are the main effective uncertainties. Hence, the four scenarios of crude oil position in the study horizon (2035) were formulated with such a premise.

In this study, considering the challenges, complexities, uncertainties and examining with a future research approach, the scenarios of crude oil position were drawn. Each of the four drawn scenarios provides images of the future of crude oil in the Iranian economy on the horizon of 2035.