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Etudes & documents ; Concession Contracts (CC) and Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) have quite different implications for Government Take and the properties of the tax system, such as progressivity. In general, taxation via CC introduces significant distortions in activity, particularly due to the balance of royalties which tax production irrespective of the profitability of the project. So CC is normally regressive while PSC is normally progressive, because PSC taxation depends more directly on the profitability of the project. Chad has the distinction of having introduced PSC in the 2007 Chad oil code, while maintaining a royalty on production. Despite this feature, we show with a Cash Flow model and Monte Carlo simulations that the application of the 2007 oil code introduced more progressivity into taxation. This feature is particularly interesting in the current context of falling crude oil prices, because it maintains a favorable tax regime for exploration and exploitation by multinational oil companies. As a result, the Chad government should reactivate a counter-cyclical policy of oil revenue reserves when the crude oil price increases again.

Etudes & documents ; Concession Contracts (CC) and Production Sharing Contracts (PSC) have quite different implications for Government Take and the properties of the tax system, such as progressivity. In general, taxation via CC introduces significant distortions in activity, particularly due to the balance of royalties which tax production irrespective of the profitability of the project. So CC is normally regressive while PSC is normally progressive, because PSC taxation depends more directly on the profitability of the project. Chad has the distinction of having introduced PSC in the 2007 Chad oil code, while maintaining a royalty on production. Despite this feature, we show with a Cash Flow model and Monte Carlo simulations that the application of the 2007 oil code introduced more progressivity into taxation. This feature is particularly interesting in the current context of falling crude oil prices, because it maintains a favorable tax regime for exploration and exploitation by multinational oil companies. As a result, the Chad government should reactivate a counter-cyclical policy of oil revenue reserves when the crude oil price increases again.

In the contested space of energy production in Canada, tension and a series of disputes over land and rights have arisen between the state, industry and local Aboriginal communities. Canadian governments have long exploited the bountiful natural resources of the land, while at the same time attempting to reconcile a difficult relationship with its Aboriginal communities. This case study reveals how the government has yielded responsibility to industry to resolve the many governance challenges of Canada's extractive hot zone. Through substantial delegation of governance duties to industry, the Canadian Government has placed large parts of its regulatory toolbox in the hands of multinational Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) departments, and hence turned social and environmental planning and programming into corporate stakeholder management. This article sets out to explain these dramatic changes in governance power play and practice by examining the case of the extractive hot zone in Alberta, according to three distinct but interlinked trajectories in governance and CSR scholarship, namely the change from "government" to "governance", the emergence of a claimed post-political condition and the evolution of CSR practices towards stakeholder management. ; publishedVersion

The article presents an assessment of social sustainable development indicators for Russian oil-and-gas regions. Natural energy resources are one of the most important factors in ensuring the competitiveness of regional economy. However, the resource sector development leads to a subnational resource dependence and to a decline in the quality of life indicators. Natural resources could be a motor of economic development. For this purpose, local authorities should enhance the social and market infrastructure, innovation and investment activity, create institutions that support diversification and prevent the overindulgence of resource companies. The natural resources' impact on the quality of life for Tomsk Oblast, the Komi Republic, the Udmurt Republic, the Republic of Tatarstan, and Samara Oblast was assessed. These regions have small energy resource (oil and gas) reserves, but mining creates 15 to 30% of the regional product. Extractive industries employ 2% of the workforce. World economy trends in 2008-2018 had a significant negative impact on the mining sector of these regions. Dependence on oil prices has led to a reduction in subnational budget revenues, the Gross Regional Product growth rate has declined, the poverty rate has increased, and the quality of life indicators have decreased. Demographic indicators (fertility and mortality rates) have also worsened. The social and economic development indicators in most of the considered oil-and-gas regions became worse than the same indicators in Russia. This fact indicates a high level of resource dependence of subnational economies (resource curse). Only in the Republic of Tatarstan the resource sector became the motor of the regional economic performance, despite the decline in oil prices. As a result, Tatarstan occupies a leading position in the rating of the quality of life indicators. The level of poverty in Tatarstan is lower than in other resource regions and in Russia. Tatarstan also has a high level of population growth, low unemployment, and higher rates of economic growth than Russia. The worst situation is in Tomsk Oblast and in the Komi Republic, in which the share of the extractive sector in the Gross Regional Product is 30%; therefore, the indicators of the socioeconomic development are highly dependent on the oil-and-gas companies' performance. Low diversification, transport accessibility limitations, poor natural and climatic conditions, as well as a decrease in the income of oil-and-gas companies due to the fall in oil prices leads to an increase in poverty rates in these regions, increases the out-region migration of the working-age population, which reduces regional competitiveness. Thus, the economies of most of the considered oil-and-gas regions cannot be considered sustainable.

Sophisticated modelling and machine learning technologies, underpinned by cloud computing, are increasingly being deployed within the oil and gas industry. As the easy energy pockets of the past dry up, such technologies promise to locate deposits, increase extraction and optimize production. These high-performance computing technologies require vast infrastructures, a requirement that, in the midst of a climate crisis, has seen a new alliance between Big Tech and Big Oil. Drawing on grey literature from press releases to whitepapers and tech demonstrations, this article investigates these alliances between oil companies and tech companies, along with the rise of cloud-driven processes in energy discovery and production – in short, the new intersection between the computational and the petrotechnical. How might the extractive violence of the 'petro' be intensified and diversified by the 'technical' of cloud computing? It argues that cloud computing does indeed contribute to more efficient processes of energy extraction, but that this effectively means an optimization of ecological destruction, assisting the industry in more rapidly and comprehensively damaging diverse forms of life. Understanding the logics of these technologies and the political economy that underpins them is crucial for intervening effectively against these environmentally devastating operations.

How does China's critical need for oil and minerals affect the political and economic conditions of Latin American states? This thesis addresses these problems by analyzing China's resource policies towards Brazil and Peru over the period 2000-2015. It uses IR-theories of power and a comparative case study approach to make sense of a new phenomenon of South-South cooperation driven by the workings and drawbacks of "extractive power." While the Chinese economy gains increasing access to strategic resources, Brazil and Peru struggle to maintain political and economic stability in their function as Beijing's peripheral suppliers. In the case of Brazil, China's oil quest has induced a relationship of structural subalternity unfolding within emerging power blocks that seek to destabilize US hegemony in international politics. In Peru, by contrast, Chinese investments in mining and consequent power asymmetries have unfolded within (and not against) the norms and values of the Washington Consensus: free trade, deregulation, and market liberalization. Despite short-lived gains, neither Brazil nor Peru have been able to leverage China's quest for oil and minerals as a way to move out of the global periphery. Against this backdrop, the thesis exposes the limits of extractive power as a strategy for political and economic emancipation in the context of South-South relations.

Across Southeast Asia's extractive frontier, Indigenous people increasingly negotiate an influx of nonstate actors pushing partnerships and projects to steer livelihoods away from extractivism and toward forest conservation. Yet, NGOs and their donors often struggle to grasp Indigenous peoples' changing needs and expectations that may prioritize sustaining an income, often via the promises extractive industries propose, over preserving fragmented forests for posterity. This paper examines three interventions by conservation NGOs in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, which leveraged custom (adat) and "alternative" livelihoods through territorial practices to dissuade a Dayak Modang community from releasing ancestral lands for palm oil plantations and coal mines. Drawing on the state's definition of adat to demarcate Modang territory, NGOs and some Modang engaged in counter-mapping and livelihood initiatives as hopeful expressions of indigeneity and making a living through acts of territorialization. We explore how NGO territorial practices unfolded as simplified spatial expressions that leveraged adat identity, enclosures, and livelihoods, neglecting the contemporary realities of living in a fragmented forest frontier. Although NGO-Modang strategies temporarily slowed dispossession and deforestation, their misaligned livelihood and conservation programs may have reinforced social differentiation between and across Dayak and migrant groups to ultimately facilitate extraction's expansion. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

Work on transparency in the extractive industries (EI) has achieved important successes over the last two decades. For example, significant commitments to disclosure have been secured, the volume of publicly available information about critical activities has increased considerably, and norms around certain information being in the public domain have been established. There is also a growing library of use cases for this information. Nonetheless, important work remains to be done to translate these efforts into impact. Political context is crucial to determining the fate of transparency efforts. Therefore, grappling with political context more effectively will also be key to unlocking more of the potential impact of these efforts. Our intention with this project is to provide a foundation for both understanding and addressing the politics of extractive industry transparency in practice, starting with this discussion paper (the main elements of which are summarized in the PLUS Politics brief). The time is ripe for a focus on political contexts for two reasons: First, work on transparency has matured and there is an opportunity to reflect on its track record to date, and Second, the added pressures on government, industry, civil society, and funders to adjust their priorities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic raise the question: can EI transparency processes retain attention and resourcing at a moment when they are arguably more necessary than ever, but competing with other demands? Focusing on political dynamics will be essential to make sure they do. Our research provides insights and recommendations for thinking and working politically across the transparency lifecycle.

Conflicts resulting from oil extractivism can be seen as ecological and cultural distribution conflicts, and have involved Latin American indigenous movements attached to their land and environments as providers of livelihood and cultural identity. In Ecuador, some have argued that this has become a 'standard narrative', essentializing the struggles of indigenous people. And the various agreements found historically between indigenous people and large companies operating in their territories seem to legitimize such criticism. But how to understand the choices of indigenous groups, with incommensurable needs, values, and claims, in the presence of extractive projects involving incommensurable local outcomes? Through an analysis of the different claims of indigenous people who voted in favor of oil extraction projects in their territories in the ITT fields of the Ecuadorian Amazon, I show how oil extraction coupled with 'social compensation' might create non-conflictive, but problematic situations, rather than conflicts. Indeed, the perception of an incommensurable loss, related to ecological and cultural difference, does not necessarily translate into opposition to mining or drilling. This is especially important in countries where the right to prior consultation could legitimize the expansion of oil activities in indigenous territories.

If African developing countries are to benefit fully from the current boom in foreign direct investment (FDI) in extractives (i.e. mining and oil/gas), it is essential that the foreign investors foster linkages to the local economy. Traditionally, extractive FDI in Africa has been seen as the enclave economy par excellence, moving in with fully integrated value chains, extracting resources and exporting them as commodities having virtually no linkages to the local economy. However, new opportunities for promoting linkages are offered by changing business strategies of local African enterprises as well as foreign multinational corporations (MNCs). MNCs in extractives are increasingly seeking local linkages as part of their efficiency, risk, and asset-seeking strategies, and linkage programmes are becoming integral elements in many MNCs' corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. At the same time, local African enterprises are eager to, and increasingly capable of, linking up to the foreign investors in order to expand their activities and acquire technology, skills and market access. The changing strategies of MNCs and the improving capabilities of African enterprises offer new opportunities for governments and donors to mobilize extractive FDI for development goals. This paper seeks to take stock of what we know about the state of and driving forces of linkage formation in South Sahel Africa extractives based on a review of the extant literature. The paper argues that while MNCs and local enterprises by themselves will indeed produce linkages, the scope, depth and development impacts of linkages eventually depend on government intervention. Resource-rich African countries' governments are aware of this and linkage promotion is increasingly becoming a key element in their industrialization strategies. A main point of the paper is that the choice between different linkage policies and approaches should be informed by a firm understanding of the workings of the private sector as well as the political and institutional capacity of host governments to adopt and implement linkage policies and approaches.

Extraction seeps unbidden into every corner of our lives. It does not end with the literal removal of fossil fuels from the earth, though there's plenty to excavate there. Rather, extraction is a productive framework for understanding the nexus of patriarchy, property, and settler-colonialism. Extraction is a way to run a government, to oversee a factory, to structure a schedule, to distill a narrative. Cultural whiteness—not the physical experience of living in lighter skin or with a narrower nose but the systemic conditioning of certain people for power—is a potent extractive mentality. This project examines extraction through scholarship pertaining to petromodernity, interviews with younger professionals, and anecdotes from the author's own grappling with her white family's stories of a mixed-race ancestor. This combination of theory and praxis, or the mix of memoir, conversation, and literature, allows rigor and intimacy to nestle, an imbrication typically prohibited by the constraints of a more traditional paper. And that formal choice to weave the personal with the intellectual embodies the possible solution posited here: that intimacy, (or, the more theoretical term, eros) could counteract extraction. The cultivation of intimacy, of caring deeply and consistently over time, cannot re-intrench misogyny or funnel the erotic into sedated, state-controlled institutions and pastimes. It must transcend such corrals. If we want a way out, we will have to love ourselves, one another, and especially the non-human world more fiercely than ever. The eros that lasts, or the love that endures, is a state, not a trait: it is antithetical to the liquidity of the very oil for which we drill.

This paper provides an overview of social and environmental management practices in the oil and gas industry. It outlines the evolution of international oil companies' approaches over the last 20 years, reviews what social and environmental management amongst such companies means in practice, and highlights some of the unresolved issues emerging today. While most companies now model their approach to social and environmental management on international norms, they face a variety of drivers of their practices. These range from complying with international standards in order to gain access to finance, to complying with new host country legislation and regulation, and gaining and maintaining a good reputation and a 'social licence to operate'. This paper argues that the complexity of these drivers problematizes the portrayal of the industry's social and environmental management as 'voluntary' corporate social responsibility, and somewhat renders the latter term misleading.