Uganda's oil: lessons on governance and the resource curse

The Guardian: The successes and failures of other oil producing countries show that technical expertise can take you only so far. Good legislation can be rapidly undermined by bad governance...

Kill the Oil and Gas Subsidies

The Atlantic: America's Most Obvious Tax Reform Idea: Kill the Oil and Gas Subsidies

The oil industry's lobbyists like to argue that its array of tax write-offs (which allow companies to deduct everything from drilling costs to the declining value of their wells) aren't any different than other deductions for less publicly reviled companies. Cutting them will discourage new exploration and put jobs at risk, they claim.

Yet, some of the breaks are anachronisms that date back almost to the days of John D. Rockefeller. And in a world of permanently high crude prices, there's very little rationale for subsidizing the bottom lines of companies like ExxonMobil and BP...

The death of peak oil

Hamilton on Econbrowser: Perhaps it's the case that Saudi Arabia isn't willing to maintain its previous production levels, or perhaps it's the case that Saudi Arabia isn't able to maintain its previous production levels. But whatever the explanation, this much I'm sure about: those who assured us that Saudi production was going to continue to increase from its levels in 2005 are the ones who so far have proved to be dead wrong.

Can a Unilateral Carbon Tax Reduce Emissions Elsewhere?

NBER WP: One country that tries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may fear that other countries get a competitive advantage and increase emissions (“leakage”). Estimates from computable general equilibrium (CGE) models such as Elliott et al (2010a,b) indicate that 15% to 25% of abatement might be offset by leakage. Yet the Fullerton et al (2012) analytical general equilibrium model shows an offsetting term with negative leakage. To derive analytical expressions, their model is quite simple, with only one good from each country or sector, a fixed stock of capital, competitive markets, and many identical consumers that purchase both goods. Their model is not intended to be realistic, but only to demonstrate the potential for negative leakage.
Most CGE models do not allow for negative leakage. In this paper, we use a full CGE model with many countries and many goods to measure effects in a way that allows for negative leakage. We vary elasticities of substitution and confirm the analytical model’s prediction that negative leakage depends on the ability of consumers to substitute into the untaxed good and the ability of firms to substitute from carbon emissions into labor or capital.

Mineral Resource Trade in Chile

OECD WP: Mineral resources present a formidable source of wealth but a formidable challenge to regulate in order to maximize social welfare from their extraction. Some resource-rich countries, such as Chile, have been successful in developing their economies and managing their revenue streams effectively. Strong institutions and regulatory oversight have helped to capitalize on the benefits of the mining sector for economy-wide growth and development in Chile. This paper identifies some of the good practice areas in mining regulation in Chile whose economy has shown strong growth over most of the last two decades. Some of the areas touched on in this paper are the taxation of the minerals sector, management of the tax revenue, and policies designed to foster spillovers into other sectors of the economy and make the most of Chile’s comparative advantage as a long-time global leader in the copper industry. The paper concludes that there is much to be learned from the Chilean experience in regulating its mining sector and many areas where it could be well used as a model for other mineral rich economies wishing to develop their mining sectors to enhance economy-wide growth.

The New Oil Landscape

National Geographic pics on how "The fracking frenzy in North Dakota has boosted the U.S. fuel supply—but at what cost?"

ExxonMobil Energy Outlook

The Outlook for Energy: In 2040, what types of energy will the world use, and how much? How will new technologies, efficiencies and policies impact the market?
These are some of the questions that we set out to answer in our Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040.