Suchergebnisse

Natural gas is likely to become increasingly important in the future. Understanding the stochastic underpinnings of natural gas prices will be critical, both to policy analysts and to market participants. To this end, we investigate the potential presence of jumps in natural gas spot prices in the U. S. and in the U. K. We find compelling empirical evidence for the importance of jumps in both markets, though jumps appear to appear more frequently in the U. K. Some of the difference between the U.S. and U.K. jump probabilities may be due to oil prices, other factors play a role.

On April 20, 2010, the Macondo well suffered a blowout, causing the mobile offshore drilling unit "Deepwater Horizon" to explode and eventually sink. Oil flowed from the well into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days. In the aftermath of this event, the US Government proposed significant regulatory changes related to offshore oil and gas exploration and production. In this paper I consider the likely costs and potential benefits from these new regulations. While both costs and benefits are very large, plausibly running into billions of US Dollars, a strong case can be made in favor of the regulations.