Designing Petroleum Fiscal Terms in a Volatile Price Enviroment

Around the world in petroleum producing countries the fiscal terms (including royalties, corporate tax, resource rent tax, cost recovery and profit-sharing terms in Production Sharing Contracts, and fees and taxes in service contracts) attract much attention by investors and host governments. Much controversy is often generated regarding the appropriate level and structure in an environment of volatile oil prices and major cost inflation and deflation. To optimise the level and structure of the fiscal arrangements when the prospective economic rents can vary enormously with plausible price and cost movements is difficult but important.

PhD supervision on this subject can be provided at the University of Aberdeen in the Department of Economics. Professor Alex Kemp has produced many research papers on this subject. These have included the conceptual basis for the design of an efficient system, and many empirical studies of how actual schemes have operated in practice. Such studies have included the UK, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.A. (including Alaska). In addition Professor Kemp has advised many host governments and other bodies such as the World Bank on licensing, tax, and profit-sharing arrangements. This has also included analysis of the role of national oil companies.

In the Department of Economics there is also a library of past dissertations on this subject and much information on the actual royalty, tax and profit-sharing terms in oil producing countries around the world.