The upstream petroleum industry includes associated service businesses such as seismic and drilling contractors, service rig operators, engineering firms and various scientific, technical service and supply companies. These extremely high-tech activities require the continuous inflow of knowledge and technologies for reconfiguring and rebuilding capabilities that fit with the continuous changes in the marketplace for sustaining a competitive advantage. To that end, infrastructures and policy orientations are required to create a conducive environment for knowledge transfer (KT) to enhance knowledge capability. This paper aims to explore how strategic alliances lead to KT that enhances organizational capabilities. We analyze the case of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to test the fuzzy Delphi model (FDM) framework. We develop a conceptual framework establishing the link between the strategic alliances (SA) and their facilitators for developing the knowledge capabilities of upstream oil and gas companies. We tested the proposed model using FDM to show how international strategic alliances (ISA) in the upstream oil and gas sector transfer knowledge and have positive effects on developing the NIOC’s knowledge capability. Positive outcomes include knowledge acquisition from partners, developing knowledge management techniques and facilitating the implementation of knowledge-based structure, developing high-tech production and exploration methods, increasing investment in innovation, and developing human resources and information technology uses.