Neo-institutional economics (NEI) has long shown that take-or-pay (ToP) long-term contracts provide a robust framework for safeguarding the interests of both upstream and downstream parties in the gas industry. The case of gas trade between Brazil and Bolivia presents an opportunity to re-examine empirically and to review the robust nature of the ToP framework over time. This case reveals that the positions of the contractors actually change giving rise to a veritable lifecycle of the contractual arrangement. Such a contract can be seen to span three successive phases. The first phase of the contract cycle begins when it is signed; allowing the investments to begin. The second phase starts when investments have been completed and the actual trade in gas begins. The third phase of the contract cycle comes when the increasing flow of gas comes close to saturating capacity and the volume levels for downstream market volume have been reached. These three contract phases are thus distinguished by how robust the alignment of the parties' interests is. The added value of the paper is then both empirical and analytical: the case study provides a brand new lifecycle analysis of the performance of ToP long-term contracting into an NEI framework.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Energy Policy.
Volume (Year): 37 (2009) Issue (Month): 2 (February) Pages: 651-657 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF