IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i10p5625-5635.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The taxation of UK oil and gas production: Why the windfalls got away

Author

Listed:
  • Abdo, Hafez

Abstract

Starting with evidence that United Kingdom Continental Shelf oil and gas companies have benefitted very disproportionately from the recent period of extraordinarily high oil prices, this paper traces the history of this weakness in the UK's petroleum fiscal regime. Evidence is provided that the progressive relaxations in the UK's petroleum fiscal regime in 1983, 1987-1988 and 1993 were: largely unnecessary to stimulate the development of new, smaller, 'marginal' fields; misguided in their assumption that such fields were more costly to develop than earlier counterparts or larger contemporary fields; and impotent compared with the effects of oil price movements. The paper concludes with a conceptualisation which illuminates why these failures of policy were not just random: they emerged from the UK's 'non-proprietorial' stance with respect to the country's oil and gas resources, a stance which assumes responsibility for oil company profitability and vainly tries to counter market forces at the expense of government revenues.

Suggested Citation

  • Abdo, Hafez, 2010. "The taxation of UK oil and gas production: Why the windfalls got away," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5625-5635, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:10:p:5625-5635
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00381-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rutledge, Ian & Wright, Philip, 1998. "Profitability and taxation in the UKCS oil and gas industry: analysing the distribution of rewards between company and country," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(10), pages 795-812, August.
    2. Michael Saunders, 1987. "Oil taxation: the cross-field allowance," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 8(4), pages 55-68, December.
    3. Smith, B., 1999. "The Impossibility of a Neutral Resource Rent Tax," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 1999-380, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    4. Zhang, Lei, 1997. "Neutrality and Efficiency of Petroleum Revenue Tax: A Theoretical Assessment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(443), pages 1106-1120, July.
    5. Michael Devereux, 1983. "Changes in the taxation of North Sea oil," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 4(2), pages 75-79, May.
    6. Alexander G. Kemp & Linda Stephens, 1996. "The Uk Petroleum Fiscal System In Retrospect," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: G MacKerron & P Pearson (ed.), The Uk Energy Experience A Model or A Warning?, chapter 5, pages 61-78, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Pesaran, M Hashem, 1990. "An Econometric Analysis of Exploration and Extraction of Oil in the U.K. Continental Shelf," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 367-390, June.
    8. Favero, Carlo A. & Pesaran, M. Hashem, 1994. "Oil investment in the North Sea," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 308-329, July.
    9. Garnaut, Ross & Clunies Ross, Anthony, 1975. "Uncertainty, Risk Aversion and the Taxing of Natural Resource Projects," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 85(338), pages 272-287, June.
    10. Smith, B., 1999. "The Impossibility of a Neutral Resource Rent Tax," Papers 380, Australian National University - Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Abdul-Salam, Yakubu, 2024. "Examining the effect of the UK oil and gas windfall tax on the economics of new fields in the UKCS province," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    2. Furtado, Lucas S. & Gonçalves, Edson & Costa, Luciano A.R., 2019. "Risk and rewards dynamics: Measuring the attractiveness of the fiscal regime in the presence of exploratory risks," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 1274-1287.
    3. Atkinson, Giles & Hamilton, Kirk, 2020. "Sustaining wealth: Simulating a sovereign wealth fund for the UK's oil and gas resources, past and future," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    4. Sylvain Rossiaud, 2014. "Opening the upstream oil industry to private companies," Working Papers halshs-00960681, HAL.
    5. Atkinson, Giles & Hamilton, Kirk, 2020. "Sustaining wealth: simulating a sovereign wealth fund for the UK’s oil and gas resources, past and future," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103564, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Abdo, Hafez, 2014. "Investigating the effectiveness of different forms of mineral resources governance in meeting the objectives of the UK petroleum fiscal regime," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 48-56.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bobylev, Yuri & Rasenko, Olesya, 2017. "Comparative Analysis of Tax Regimes in the Oil Sector," Working Papers 041723, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
    2. Diderik Lund, 2009. "Rent Taxation for Nonrenewable Resources," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 287-307, September.
    3. ten Cate, Arie & Mulder, Machiel, 2007. "Impact of the oil price and fiscal facilities on offshore mining at the Dutch Continental Shelf," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 5601-5613, November.
    4. Panteghini Paolo, 2001. "On Corporate Tax Asymmetries and Neutrality," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 2(3), pages 269-286, August.
    5. Smith, James L., 2014. "A parsimonious model of tax avoidance and distortions in petroleum exploration and development," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 140-157.
    6. Smith, James L., 2013. "Issues in extractive resource taxation: A review of research methods and models," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 320-331.
    7. Güntner, Jochen H.F., 2019. "How do oil producers respond to giant oil field discoveries?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 59-74.
    8. Abdo, Hafez, 2014. "Investigating the effectiveness of different forms of mineral resources governance in meeting the objectives of the UK petroleum fiscal regime," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 48-56.
    9. Pernille Parmer & Steinar Strøm & Helge Sandvig Thorsen & Inger Ubbe & Bjørnar Andreas Kvinge, 2018. "Investments on the Norwegian Continental Shelf - An Empirical Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 7370, CESifo.
    10. Machiel Mulder & Arie ten Cate & Ali Aouragh & Joeri Gorter, 2004. "Gas exploration and production at the Dutch continental shelf: an assessment of the 'Depreciation at Will'," CPB Document 66, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    11. Kemp, A. G. & Kasim, A. S., 2003. "Forecasting activity levels in the UK continental shelf: the role of perceptions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 713-739, November.
    12. Berg, Magnus & Bøhren, Øyvind & Vassnes, Erik, 2018. "Modeling the response to exogenous shocks: The capital uplift rate in petroleum taxation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 442-455.
    13. Mohn, Klaus & Misund, Bård, 2008. "Shifting sentiments in Firm Investment: An Application to the Oil Industry," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2009/12, University of Stavanger.
    14. Chen, Fan & Linn, Scott C., 2017. "Investment and operating choice: Oil and natural gas futures prices and drilling activity," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 54-68.
    15. Paolo M. Panteghini, 2005. "Asymmetric Taxation under Incremental and Sequential Investment," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 7(5), pages 761-779, December.
    16. Osmel Manzano & Francisco Monaldi, 2008. "The Political Economy of Oil Production in Latin America," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2008), pages 59-103, August.
    17. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Smith, Ron, 1995. "The role of theory in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 61-79, May.
    18. Machiel Mulder & Arie ten Cate & Ali Aouragh & Joeri Gorter, 2004. "Gas exploration and production at the Dutch continental shelf: an assessment of the 'Depreciation at Will'," CPB Document 66.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    19. Yves Jégourel, 2015. "Dynamique de l’offre pétrolière, stratégies d’investissement et comportements de stockage : Un état des lieux [ Oil supply dynamics, investment strategy and storage behavior: the current situation ]," Research papers & Policy papers 1514, Policy Center for the New South.
    20. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Samiei, Hossein, 1995. "Forecasting ultimate resource recovery," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 11(4), pages 543-555, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Oil Policy UKCS;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:10:p:5625-5635. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.