Oil companies often announce revised estimates of their reserves. This indicates that stock uncertainty is a prevalent feature of natural resource industries. In this paper we consider the multi-deposit case where resource extraction produces information about the size of reserves. We show that the optimal order of extracting resource deposits depends both on the informational characteristics of the extraction process and on the extraction costs. Differences in extraction costs, a key consideration highlighted in Solow and Wan (1976), must be balanced against the relative value of information generated by the extraction of various deposits. Our model supplies an explanation of why high cost deposits are sometimes extracted when lower cost deposits have not been exhausted.
Les compagnies pétrolières révisent souvent les chiffres de leurs réserves, ce qui indique que l’incertitude concernant les stocks est prévalente. Nous considérons le cas où l’extraction donne des informations sur la taille des réserves. Nous prouvons que l’ordre optimal d’exploitation des stocks dépend des propriétés du processus d’extraction concernant la révélation d’information et des coûts. La différence des coûts, qui est une considération importante dans Solow and Wan (1976), doit être balancée contre la valeur informative des réserves. Notre modèle fournit une explication du fait que les réserves plus coûteuses sont parfois exploitées avant l’épuisement des réserves moins coûteuses.
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
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Find related papers by JEL classification: Q30 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: