In the last decade the significant change in the strategic planning process of the oil companies was observed. The new face of this companies is shaped by: focus on profitability and shareholder value, impossibility of reliable forecasting, increased need for flexibility. The paper presents one of the new instruments supporting the process of enterprise management - balanced scorecard. First part of this paper reviews the basic assumptions of the balanced scorecard concept. The focus is on the distinet groups of performance measures used and the role of measurement systems in enterprise management. Application of performance measures in enterprise management drives from the "management by objective" concept. The goals of enterprise can be archived by decomposition on the particular internal units and then development and systematic use of the performance measurement system supporting to assess the rate of particular objectives achievement. For each group of measures examples of indicators enabling assessment the rate of achievement of strategic assumptions formulated in balanced scorecard are presented. In the second part of the paper describes the example of the balanced scorecard for one of the major oil companies.