B. Mommer

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                    [post_date] => 2001-06-01 00:00:08
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                    [post_content] => In this paper we shall discuss the performance of three oil fiscal regimes over the past 25 years: the UK, Alaska, and Venezuela. This empirically oriented paper is based on our previous more theoretical paper on the subject of oil fiscal regimes,' but it can be read independently. Nevertheless, a reminder of a few points made in that paper may be helpful.
                    [post_title] => Fiscal Regimes and Oil Revenues in the UK, Alaska and Venezuela
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                    [post_content] => 

Record Export Revenues

Hugo Chávez took over the Presidency of Venezuela on 2 February 1999. At that time world petroleum markets were in deep disarray. Since then the situation has changed radically, and favourably. And there is no doubt that the new Venezuelan government played an important role in the recovery. The last government of the ancien régime under pressure from the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDV), came close to abandoning OPEC, and PDV's publicly heralded policy to maximize volumes disregarding OPEC quotas and price objectives was a major cause of the 1998 oil price crisis. President Chávez and his oil minister, Alí Rodríguez Araque, reversed this situation completely. Together with the governments of Mexico and Saudi Arabia, Venezuela promoted successfully a new understanding on quotas and higher prices between OPEC members and other exporting countries. Moreover, the Venezuelan government promoted and hosted, in 2000, the second head-of-state meeting ever held in the history of OPEC. As a result the proceeds from hydrocarbon exports of the country peaked at US$ 27.3 billion in 2000, a significant increase over the previous peak of US$ 19.1 billion in 1981.

Falling Fiscal Revenues

There was, however, an important difference. In 1981 those US$ 19.1 billion of export sales generated US$ 13.9 billion in royalties and income taxes for the Venezuelan government, while in the year 2000, US$ 27.3 billion of export proceeds generated only US$ 11.3 billion in fiscal revenues. Royalties and income taxes amounted to 73 percent of export revenues in 1981, but only to 41 percent in 2000. As a matter of fact, between 1976, the year that saw the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry, and 1992, this percentage varied between 64 percent and 81 percent, averaging 71 percent. Since 1993 and until 2000, the proportion has varied between 28 percent and 50 percent, with an average of only 36 percent.

'Importing' Costs

One of the reasons for falling fiscal revenues goes back to 1989 when the country came close to insolvency, and was forced to subscribe to IMF - and World Bank - inspired adjustment programmes and reforms. PDV adopted then the worldwide combined accounting method for reporting profits and losses, thus bringing down the ring fence around its activities in Venezuela. It then started to transfer to Venezuela, on a massive scale, costs incurred in its ventures abroad, thus increasing the profits deemed to have accrued outside the country. The benefits to the company were obvious, as it is subject to a 67.7 percent income tax in Venezuela compared with a rate of 34 percent in the United States. Most importantly, PDV also charged to its Venezuelan accounts the financial costs of its nine billion dollar debt, largely related to its internationalisation policy. In the early 1990s PDV 'borrowed' a billion dollars from one of its foreign affiliates, thus making a profit on the agreed interest payments equivalent to the difference in income tax rates.

Outsourcing

In 1989, the country started to open up its marginal oil fields to private investors. These fields produced about 500 thousand b/d in 2000. The operating contracts were structured to minimize the tax burden falling on private investors. Thus, a large part of the profits generated by these investments accrued to the private investors and were subject, not to an income tax of 67.7 percent but of only 34 percent. The reason lies in the nature of the contracts, which are service and not production agreements. In any case, PDV thus fulfilled the objective of increasing oil production, and though the company achieved only a modest or no increase in profits, the cash flow did increase significantly.

Lower Taxation

For some marginal oil fields PDV negotiated with the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) the imposition of a one percent royalty, down from the customary 16.67 percent. The company also succeeded in negotiating a one percent royalty, applicable during the first ten years of the project, for four joint ventures with foreign companies in the Orinoco Belt. Moreover, the income tax law of 1993 exempted these ventures from the 67.7 percent income tax rate applied to hydrocarbons, and subjected them to the 34 percent rate applicable to the non-oil sector. One of these projects, Petrozuata, came on stream in February 2001 and it is now working close to its capacity, transforming 120 thousand b/d of extra-heavy crude into 104 thousand b/d of synthetic crude. In June 2001 a similar project, Cerro Negro, will come on stream. Thus, in the second half of this year the production of very lightly taxed syncrude will total 208 thousand b/d. A paradoxical situation has arisen in this context. Last year the upgraders were not ready yet to process the 128 thousand b/d of extra-heavy crude, which they were then producing. Hence the stuff was sold as crude oil at about US$ 15 per barrel (to be diluted with lighter crudes), and therefore paid a royalty of 16.67 percent, that is US$ 2.50 per barrel. The extra-heavy crude produced this year, and for the next ten years, being processed in the upgrading facilities which are now operating will benefit from a reduction of royalty from 16.67 percent to one percent. In 1993, PDV also convinced Congress to phase out the system of 'fiscal export values', which actually was an excise tax on exports of about 29 percent. At the same time the new income tax law allowed some adjustments for inflation, which brought the effective income tax rate from about 59 percent pre-1993 down to an average of 43 percent in the years 1993-2000.

Transfer Pricing

Ever since 1983, when PDV initiated its internationalisation policy, the company used its foreign affiliates to 'export' profits through transfer pricing. This explains the extraordinary dynamism of PDV's internationalisation policy. At present these transfers amount to about half a billion dollars annually. An extreme case of transfer pricing is to be found, however, within the country, with PDV's affiliate Bitor producing Orimulsion. In 2000, PDV used 74 thousand b/d of extra-heavy crude to produce Orimulsion (consisting of extra-heavy oil diluted in water in a proportion 70:30 with the help of an emulsifier). However, in this case the transfer price is calculated according to a formula based on coal, and not on crude oil. Thus, in 2000, those barrels were priced at about US$ 0.70 instead of US$ 15.00, with the consequent reduction in royalties and income taxes.

OPEC Quotas and Extra-heavy Oil

The Orimulsion and syncrude projects have been designed irrespective of the interests of the country in the generation of fiscal revenues through hydrocarbon exports. Moreover, if the extra-heavy crude were to be considered as part of the country's OPEC quota, the result would be disastrous, as they would then displace more highly taxed conventional crudes. The loss in fiscal revenues at a price of US$ 20 per barrel (for the Venezuelan export basket) would amount, roughly, to US$ 10 per barrel. As things stand, the Venezuelan government has accepted the argument that extra-heavy crude is not subject to OPEC quotas because it is actually much closer to bitumen than to crude oil. Whatever this argument may be worth legally or technically, it may not impress other OPEC members when volumes of extra-heavy oil become significant. This moment may be quite close. There are indeed another two projects of syncrude already under way, which will bring the total production of syncrude to 570 thousand b/d (i.e. processing about 650 thousand b/d of extra-heavy crude) in 2005. According to the company's plans, production of syncrude would increase to 1.2 million b/d by the year 2010. Bitor will also double its capacity to process about 150 thousand b/d of extra-heavy crude into Orimulsion by the end of the year 2001, and plans to double again its production within a few years. The truth is that syncrude is competing with conventional crude oil, and that Orimulsion is competing with fuel oil in power stations. Hence, they both have an impact on the world oil price. The rush into the Orinoco Belt is about to generate a major contradiction in Venezuelan oil policy, as it is not compatible with revenue and price objectives.

MEM Recovering the Control over the Natural Resource

As soon as Rodríguez Araque took over the Oil Ministry in 1999, he began to implement a policy aiming at recovering the state control over natural resources. Ultimately, this is where the power of oil-exporting countries comes from. In this context, it appears that it was a strategic mistake to leave the negotiation of upstream contracts and the design of bidding rounds to PDV, as had happened in the years of Apertura. The consequence was that the interests of the nation as the natural resource owner were ignored. To remedy this situation, the Ministry redesigned the forthcoming bidding rounds in natural gas. Although PDV may continue to play a role on the technical side, the Ministry is now controlling both the political and fiscal sides. The new Gas Law, enacted in 1999, raised the minimum fiscal take that the government was prepared to accept. The royalty rate was set at 20 percent as a minimum, and in the forthcoming licensing round this rate will be one of the bidding parameters. MEM also put an end to the old royalty agreements. Transfer prices are no longer accepted. PDV was obliged to pay royalties according to open market prices. However, the government still accepts low discounted transfer prices for the assessment of income tax liabilities. Furthermore, no progress was achieved on the subject of Bitor and Orimulsion. In November 2000, the National Assembly passed an enabling law according to which the Government is now free to reform completely the existing legal framework for hydrocarbons. MEM has already announced that the new Hydrocarbon Law will also establish a minimum royalty rate of 20 percent. Generally speaking, the Ministry (now headed by Álvaro Silva Calderón after Rodríguez Araque became secretary general of OPEC in January 2001) believes that in the context of globalisation, royalty has to be the central rent-collecting device in any new fiscal regime in oil. Worldwide combined reporting of losses and profits is a fact, and that fact makes effective higher excess-profit or income tax rates very difficult if not impossible to impose. Indeed, over the last twenty years or so the worldwide trend has been away from high corporate income tax levels and in favour of excise or value added taxes. Remarkably enough, at the same time the International Energy Agency, the Secretariat of the Energy Charter Treaty, the multinational companies, and international consultants have been trying to push the oil-exporting countries into the opposite direction. They were not unsuccessful in the years of Apertura in Venezuela, with the consequent sharp fall in fiscal revenues.

Will the Petroleum Reform Succeed?

In Venezuela new Hydrocarbon Laws are not retroactive. They only apply to new licenses, concessions or contracts, not to the old ones. Regarding the latter, there is not very much the government can do but negotiate with the private companies. However, the bargaining power of the government with PDV, which is state owned, is different. MEM believes that it will be possible to reverse the disastrous fiscal reforms of 1993, at least partially. The declared aim is to increase the royalty rate applicable to PDV sharply, far above the envisaged minimum of twenty percent, but reducing at the same time the income tax rate of 67.7 percent to the usual rate of 34 percent. Of course, overall the intended outcome would be higher-than-otherwise fiscal revenues. But there is no guarantee that this strategy will succeed. Recall that the president of PDV, General Guaicaipuro Lameda, was until October 2000 the head of the government's Budget Office and is therefore well aware of the fiscal problem. Now he has also become aware of the problems faced by PDV. They may be summarized by reference to one figure: costs and expenditure increased in the year 2000 by a staggering 44.6 percent. The priority of the president of PDV has to be to turn around the company. A lot of good will and hard bargaining will be required to get the oil sector on track again, from both a fiscal and entrepreneurial perspective. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a positive outcome. The answer to the question: 'why did PDV in the past engage in a fiscal revenue minimizing strategy?' is that its leadership reached the conclusion that the political regime - today dubbed the IVth Republic - was beyond repair. PDV reached this conclusion as early as 1983, when ten years of booming fiscal revenues came to an end in the midst of a foreign debt and currency crisis. Hence, PDV believed that to spend a dollar was always a better option than paying an additional dollar in taxes. That same year, in 1983, Hugo Chávez founded his military movement, after having reached the same conclusion. The question today is whether a solution to the oil fiscal problem will help Chávez' Vth Republic to solve the problems of an impoverished country. A failure to solve the problem would prolong the economic decay of the last twenty years. [post_title] => Venezuelan Oil Politics at the Crossroads [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => venezuelan-oil-politics-at-the-crossroads [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2001-03-01 00:00:22 [post_modified_gmt] => 2001-03-01 00:00:22 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/venezuelan-oil-politics-at-the-crossroads/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 28008 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 2000-01-01 00:00:29 [post_date_gmt] => 2000-01-01 00:00:29 [post_content] => Most people still believe that the big international oil Companies dominate the governance of world oil. This is not surprising since these companies continue to be amongst the largest in the world and through most of the twentieth century their power has been unchallenged. Their eclipse inside the exporting countries by the national oil companies has been only partla1 since they have not lost their supremacy in the development and application of new technologies; and outside the exporting countries they have ceded none of their powers. In short, it is clear that the international oil companies are not preparing to retire fiom the stage they have dominated for so long. [post_title] => The Governance of International Oil: The Changing Rules of the Game [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-governance-of-international-oil-the-changing-rules-of-the-game [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-02-29 13:55:52 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-02-29 13:55:52 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/the-governance-of-international-oil-the-changing-rules-of-the-game/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [3] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 28028 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 1999-05-01 00:00:08 [post_date_gmt] => 1999-04-30 23:00:08 [post_content] => Fiscal regimes in oil deal essentially with the upstream, that is exploration and production, They may, or may not, be defmed in a single law. More often than not, the components of fiscal regimes in oil are actually found dispersed in different laws and rulings, and their beneficiaries may include municipalities, provincial administration and the centrd government. In order to be entitled to explore a plot of land and to exploit the reservoirs that might be discovered the oil company will enter in some kind of legal arrangements with the natural resource owner. These arrangements - a licence, concession, lease, service contract, profit or production-sharing agreement - normally also include besides royalties and taxes some specific payments and several other conditions. In this paper these conditions will be considered as part of fiscal regimes even when the natural resource is privately owned and, therefore, the oil companies have to acquireprivate leases. The reason is that from the lessee’s standpoint it is the total payment, whether made to the government andor the private owners, that matters. [post_title] => Oil Prices and Fiscal Regimes [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => oil-prices-and-fiscal-regimes [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-02-29 13:55:04 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-02-29 13:55:04 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/oil-prices-and-fiscal-regimes/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [4] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 28030 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 1999-04-01 00:00:35 [post_date_gmt] => 1999-03-31 23:00:35 [post_content] => The general elections in November and December 1998 brought about fundamental changes in Venezuela's political landscape. The winner of the presidential elections, with 56% of the votes, was lieutenant colonel Hugo Chávez, the leader of the failed coup d'état of February 1992. After spending two years in jail and discharged from the army he had turned politician. And he accomplished in the political arena what he had failed to achieve as a military coup leader: to defeat and to put an end to forty years of a party system dominated by Acción Democrática and Copei. Having together collected 85% of the votes and more in previous elections, this time they only obtained approximately 40%. This was ultimately the consequence of these parties' performance since nationalisation of the oil industry in the 1970s. In spite of the enormous amount of oil money the economy started to decay at the end of the 1970s, and still continues to do so twenty years later. Real wages have fallen by some 75% over this period. Apart from mismanagement and incompetence, public opinion in Venezuela blames corruption. Not surprisingly, then, President Chávez is aiming at radical political reforms at the centre of which is a Constituent Assembly to be convened in the near future. Perhaps more surprisingly, however, is the fact that his criticism regarding oil is not only limited to the squandering of oil revenues but also includes the performance of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDV), the national oil company. Since Venezuela embraced ten years ago a new oil policy known as Apertura Petrolera (opening up the oil sector to private investors), the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) has been losing out against PDV. The national oil company actually took over the making of oil policy. Thus becoming a political actor, PDV transformed the traditional national oil policy, which concentrated on fiscal revenues, into a new and essentially sectorial oil policy that concentrated on the development of the oil industry. To put it differently, the policy issue was no longer prices but volumes. Accordingly, since 1989 PDV had been promoting legal reforms to make the fiscal regime more 'flexible'. This meant, on the one hand, allowing for increasing costs in order to increase production (i.e. cost-flexible) and, on the other, allowing the fiscal regime to absorb the effect of lower prices (i.e. price-flexible). Apart from legal reforms particularly favouring private investors, PDV took care to embody even more advantageous terms within the contracts. Obviously enough, OPEC quotas did not fit into this picture. Hence quotas came under heavy attack from PDV headquarters, including a press campaign in favour of Venezuela leaving the organisation. Most prominent amongst the campaigners were Andrés Sosa, President of PDV from 1990 to 1992, and Luis Giusti, President of PDV from 1994 until recently. Since 1994 Venezuela has no longer abided by the quotas. At that time, opposition to these changes in Congress was weak and basically limited to a fraction of a new opposition party which, after it split, adopted the name of Fatherland for All (Patria Para Todos; PPT). PPT's speaker on oil policy was Alí Rodríguez, a lawyer, who also acted for several years as the President of the Committee for Energy and Mines of the House of Representatives. He went to the Supreme Court to challenge the legality, and even constitutionality, of several clauses contained in the contracts granted in 1996. Three years later the Supreme Court still has not taken any decision. But there was another very different point of criticism about the way that PDV handled Apertura Petrolera; it soon became clear that 'private capital', practically speaking, was a synonym for 'foreign capital'. At the beginning at least, absolutely nothing was done to promote the creation and development of Venezuelan private oil companies which, as a consequence of the nationalisation law of 1975, have so far been non existent. Even worse, in the contracts with foreign investors, nothing was done to help the Venezuelan private service and input-providing industry to obtain a fair share of this new market. This second criticism was not completely unsuccessful and in the bidding round of 1997 PDV was forced to set aside some plots of land for Venezuelan private oil companies. However, all in all, opposition to PDV's handling of Apertura Petrolera was very weak, at least as long as prices remained relatively high, investment levels were soaring, and production was growing. In the boom years Venezuela's private sector had ultimately little to complain about, and also the boom largely compensated for the relative loss of fiscal revenues. Indeed, whereas in the years 1986 to 1991 fiscal revenues from oil, on average, represented more than 75% of exports, they fell below 50% in the years 1992 to 1997. Then came the fall of prices, shrinking investment, and the inevitable cuts in production. Fiscal revenues collapsed, although in 1998 they were inflated by so-called 'dividends'. PDV had actually to borrow in order to be able to pay them. Only a month ago the outlook for 1999 was very bleak. Government revenues from oil would fall to some 35% of export revenues, which were estimated at an average price of only nine dollars a barrel for the Venezuelan basket. Obviously enough, down this road was lurking the privatisation of PDV. However, 1998 was a year of general elections. The political role of PDV became more difficult. The government now agreed with other exporting countries (OPEC and non OPEC) to production cuts which, in the case of Venezuela, were very substantial: 525,000 b/d. Thus PDV's programme of expansion was brought to a sudden stop, although the government was never able to force the company into full compliance. On the other hand, PDV was a political actor in that it campaigned to commit the presidential candidates to its policy. Chávez, however, on the contrary declared during his campaign that he would re-establish the political supremacy of MEM over PDV. President Chávez appointed Alí Rodríguez as his Minister of Energy and Mines. In PDV, he appointed as President Roberto Mandini, a high-ranking member of PDV's meritocracy who had nevertheless kept a critical distance from Luis Giusti and his policy. Chávez also appointed three outsiders as Vice-Presidents, two military and one civilian, all of them belonging to the inner circle of the President. Although the government has pledged that it will fully respect the private contracts, nevertheless these appointments signal very significant changes in Venezuelan oil politics. Internationally, the most relevant is the fact that the new government finally obliged PDV to implement fully the output cuts agreed upon last year. Moreover, it participated actively in the negotiations, which involved OPEC and non-OPEC exporters and which led to further cuts agreed upon in the last OPEC meeting in March 1999. Venezuela agreed to an additional cut of 125,000 b/d. Confident that the new agreement would work this time -- to which the political changes in Caracas have contributed substantially -- the market responded immediately with a substantial increase in prices. Moreover, Minister Rodríguez has already made clear that he intends to support oil prices, in the long run, by creating on top of the cost floor a 'fiscal floor', thus defining a minimum price level deemed to be reasonable and ultimately acceptable to everybody. This would put an end to the dismantling of the fiscal regime in oil of the last decade and actually revert it, thus contributing to the stabilisation of oil prices. Also, one may wonder if this concept of a reasonable minimum price will eventually lead to the concept of a reasonable maximum price? Privatisation of PDV, or even part of it, has been categorically ruled out by the new government. However, the government is committed to grant a much more important role to private national investors, and it is definitely not opposed to new foreign investment. The new Minister has announced a complete overhaul of the legal framework, which has been overtaken by the events since nationalisation in the 1970s, and especially by Apertura Petrolera. Although we are witnessing in Venezuela a very important and significant policy change, this may be construed as part of a cycle. Over the last three decades or so, Venezuela's oil policy has swung from one extreme to the other. At the time of nationalisation, oil revenues were practically the only issue of concern, and it was in order to maximise them that private capital was excluded and prices were pushed to levels far beyond what the market could possibly sustain. Then with Apertura Petrolera only volumes mattered, not fiscal revenues or the nature of investment whether public or private, national or foreign. Now Venezuelan oil policy is moving, so to speak, to the centre. Hence, one may well argue that the most outstanding characteristic of President Chávez's oil policy is its willingness to compromise. His Minister is looking for a new legal and institutional arrangement in line with the complex realities that have emerged since nationalisation and trying to put an end to a period of instability that originated with nationalisation. What is really at stake, is to recover the governability of Venezuelan oil, as part of a political programme aiming at recovering the governability of the country as such. [post_title] => Changing Venezuelan Oil Policy [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => changing-venezuelan-oil-policy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 1999-04-01 00:00:35 [post_modified_gmt] => 1999-03-31 23:00:35 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/changing-venezuelan-oil-policy/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [5] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 28046 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 1998-04-01 00:00:38 [post_date_gmt] => 1998-03-31 23:00:38 [post_content] => Since 1989 Venezuela has been developing a new oil policy, known as Politica Petrolera de Apertura (Oil Opening Policy), or Apertura Petrolera for short. With Apertura Petrolera the Venezuelan oil sector, nationalised in 1976, has been re-opened to private investors. Inviting private investors back may itself be considered a historic voIte-face in Venezuelan oil politics, though the government and the national oil company, Petrbleos de Venezuela (PDV),l argued that this contingency was anticipated in the Nationalisation Law. But a few years later the leadership of the nationd oil company was self-confident enough to admit that the ultimate goal was the privatisation of PDV. Hence Apertura Petrolera involves, without doubt, a major policy shift in the history of Venezuelan oil. [post_title] => The New Governance of Venezuelan Oil [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-new-governance-of-venezuelan-oil [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-02-29 13:54:06 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-02-29 13:54:06 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/the-new-governance-of-venezuelan-oil/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [6] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 28067 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 1997-01-01 00:00:20 [post_date_gmt] => 1997-01-01 00:00:20 [post_content] => A very great and, at first glance, confusing variety of tenancy arrangements for mineral resources can be observed around the world. Substance and form may vary not only from one country to another, but even from one region to another within the same country. In addition, the type of tenancy may vary from one mineral to another, largely determined by an accident of hstory, possibly a history going back to ancient times. One basic and obvious distinction to be made, however, is between public and private ownership. Public ownership of mineral resources is the rule worldwide, private ownership the exception. Yet by far the most important examples of extractive industries in modern economic history, British coal and American oil, both developed under private mineral property although it was brought to an end, in the former case, by nationalization in 193 8. This paper will deal with these two exceptions whch wiIl, incidentally, confirm the rule. [post_title] => Private Landlord-Tenant Relationship in British Coal and American Oil: A Theory of Mineral Leases [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => private-landlord-tenant-relationship-in-british-coaland-american-oil-a-theory-of-mineral-leases [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-02-29 13:52:08 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-02-29 13:52:08 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/private-landlord-tenant-relationship-in-british-coaland-american-oil-a-theory-of-mineral-leases/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [7] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 28087 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 1994-01-01 00:00:34 [post_date_gmt] => 1994-01-01 00:00:34 [post_content] =>

This paper starts by defining the political role of mining companies in terms of the landlordtenant relationship in a modern economy. We shall then examine the role played by international oil companies in the oil exporting countries of the Third World, thus addressing the question of why they were nationalized. This will be followed by an analysis of the role of national oil companies along the same lines; the issue to be examined is their contribution to the emergence of new types of landlord-tenant relationships, nationally and internationally. Finally we shall conclude with an assessment of the future of National Oil Companies in exporting countries. To illustrate the argument we shall refer to Venezuela and its National Oil Company, Petr6leos de Venezuela S.A. (PDV) throughout this paper.

[post_title] => The Political Role of National Oil Companies in Exporting Countries: The Venezuelan Case [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => the-political-role-of-national-oil-companies-in-exporting-countries-the-venezuelan-case [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-02-29 13:50:40 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-02-29 13:50:40 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/the-political-role-of-national-oil-companies-in-exporting-countries-the-venezuelan-case/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) ) [post_count] => 8 [current_post] => -1 [before_loop] => 1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 27979 [post_author] => 1 [post_date] => 2001-06-01 00:00:08 [post_date_gmt] => 2001-05-31 23:00:08 [post_content] => In this paper we shall discuss the performance of three oil fiscal regimes over the past 25 years: the UK, Alaska, and Venezuela. This empirically oriented paper is based on our previous more theoretical paper on the subject of oil fiscal regimes,' but it can be read independently. Nevertheless, a reminder of a few points made in that paper may be helpful. [post_title] => Fiscal Regimes and Oil Revenues in the UK, Alaska and Venezuela [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => fiscal-regimes-and-oil-revenues-in-the-uk-alaska-and-venezuela [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-02-29 13:56:11 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-02-29 13:56:11 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/publications/fiscal-regimes-and-oil-revenues-in-the-uk-alaska-and-venezuela/ [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => publications [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [comment_count] => 0 [current_comment] => -1 [found_posts] => 8 [max_num_pages] => 0 [max_num_comment_pages] => 0 [is_single] => [is_preview] => [is_page] => [is_archive] => 1 [is_date] => [is_year] => [is_month] => [is_day] => [is_time] => [is_author] => [is_category] => [is_tag] => [is_tax] => [is_search] => [is_feed] => [is_comment_feed] => [is_trackback] => [is_home] => [is_privacy_policy] => [is_404] => [is_embed] => [is_paged] => [is_admin] => [is_attachment] => [is_singular] => [is_robots] => [is_favicon] => [is_posts_page] => [is_post_type_archive] => 1 [query_vars_hash:WP_Query:private] => 7147d0f82017a2d933233faa22d46138 [query_vars_changed:WP_Query:private] => [thumbnails_cached] => [allow_query_attachment_by_filename:protected] => [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => query_vars_hash [1] => query_vars_changed ) [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array ( [0] => init_query_flags [1] => parse_tax_query ) )

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