A Study on International Petroleum Exploration and Development Agreements

• Main Author: 黃雅葶
• Other Authors: 王敏銓
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47238944390694787680

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 科技法律研究所 === 100 === Petroleum as the natural resource that constitutes an integral part of modern human society is in fact an important pillar supporting the economic development of countries around the world. In the petroleum industry, due to the control over the source of petroleum and the huge profits brought about, the petroleum exploration and development activities have acquired irreplaceable importance. However, because of the uneven geographical distribution of petroleum, as well as the demand for talent, technology, equipment, funding and risk sharing by those resource-rich countries, cooperation between foreign petroleum companies and those resource-rich countries has become an inevitable trend. In international petroleum exploration and development cooperation, relevant agreements have played major roles, since they not only constitute the legal basis for foreign petroleum companies to engage in petroleum exploration and development activities in resource-rich countries, but also stipulate the rights and obligations between the foreign petroleum companies and local governments. In order to establish the fundamental framework of international petroleum exploration and development agreements, avoid errors arisen from word of mouth, and help petroleum companies to carry out investment appraisal of the international petroleum exploration and development cooperation, the author, in this thesis, conducts in-depth investigations on international petroleum exploration and development agreements and explores the differences between a variety of agreement types and petroleum income distributions, in expectations that this thesis may help the industry of petroleum exploration and development. Typical agreements for international petroleum exploration and development cooperation include the following: royalty and tax agreements, production sharing contracts and risk service contracts. The differences of the three agreements are manifested in their respective terms of petroleum income distribution and the corresponding prices obtained by foreign petroleum companies. However, as time went by, there has been intensive communication between petroleum-rich countries, whereas agreements for international petroleum exploration and development activities has been developed towards hybrid agreements, where petroleum-rich countries may choose the terms available, mix them in the agreements for petroleum exploration and development activities and create agreements on their own. The terms of international petroleum exploration and development agreements are generally divided into basic terms and economic terms. In this thesis, I will introduce those distinctive terms like “royalty,” “cost recovery limits” and “percentage of profit petroleum.” Meanwhile, in order to understand the contractual framework of the investment target countries, I will take those petroleum-rich countries where our national petroleum company has invested, plans to invest or evaluates to invest as empirical objects, and conduct in-depth investigations on relevant terms of petroleum income distributions in contract templates and investment conditions for international petroleum exploration and development activities. In the meantime, under the same assumptions of petroleum mining area, I will conduct actual calculation of the petroleum income distributions between the petroleum-rich countries and foreign petroleum companies and finally quantify the petroleum revenues that foreign petroleum companies obtain to further analyze and compare the results of investment in international petroleum exploration and development cooperation in all of the petroleum-rich countries. I hope that the outcome could offer recommendations on the investment of international petroleum exploration and development cooperation through empirical research and analysis, and therefore, help look for the direction of future cooperation in the international petroleum exploration and development activities.