Silvana Tordo - Böcker

'Petroleum Exploration and Production Rights: Allocation Strategies and Design Issues' is part of the World Bank Working Paper series. These papers are published to communicate the results of the Bank's ongoing research and to stimulate public discussion. Many governments rely on oil companies to efficiently exploit natural resources. Governments have the challenging task of deciding which companies should be awarded exclusive rights to explore, develop, and produce their petroleum resources, and on what conditions such rights should be awarded. This paper analyses the available evidence on the advantages and disadvantages of various systems used by petroleum-producing countries to allocate petroleum exploration, development, and production rights, and considers the policy implications of each system. The experience of six petroleum-producing countries is presented in detail, and numerous other examples are provided to derive lessons of wider applicability. The paper presents various conclusions for policy makers about the optimal design of allocation systems.

A number of countries have recently discovered and are developing oil and gas reserves. Policy makers in such countries are anxious to obtain the greatest benefits for their economies from the extraction of these exhaustible resources by designing appropriate policies to achieve desired goals. One important theme of such policies is the so-called local content created by the sector―the extent to which the output of the extractive industry sector generates further benefits to the economy beyond the direct contribution of its value-added, through its links to other sectors. While local content policies have the potential to stimulate broad-based economic development, their application in petroleum-rich countries has achieved mixed results. This paper describes the policies and practices meant to foster the development of economic linkages from the petroleum sector, as adopted by a number of petroleum-producing countries both in and outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Examples of policy objectives, implementation tools, and reporting metrics are provided to derive lessons of wider applicability. The paper presents various conclusions for policy makers about the design of local content policies.

This study aims to raise policy makers' awareness of the business case for investing in gas flaring and methane reduction projects. It focuses on mid-sized flares that are too small to be prioritized by oil companies but represent 58 percent of global flare volumes.