International Petroleum Fiscal Regimes: Trends in Tax-Royalty Worldwide and in Romania

“Resource nationalism” is a cyclical phenomenon whereby governments assert varying degrees of control over natural resources located within their territories, in an attempt to maximise revenue generation from their national resources. Resource nationalism often depends on the price of hydrocarbons and the ability of national governments to extract them. International oil companies are attractive partners for the development of concessions as they have advanced extractive technology, superior project management skills, flexible logistical chains and access to capital from global financial markets. However, these advantages will erode as National Oil Companies (NOCs) improve their expertise over the mid- to long-term and new forms of resource nationalism may restrict their room for manoeuvre.The recent trends in most of oil producing countries’ policies are focusing on highly increasing the fiscal levies imposed to resources exploited under the concession agreements and also on imposing minimum labor taxes. At the end of 2014, The Romanian Government will have to reappraise the fiscal systems for the companies operating in the national oil and gas upstream sector, because the 10-year "freezing" of royalties on oil and gas, at a very low level compared with other producing countries will come to an end. This article tries to present the trends in the international petroleum fiscal regimes worldwide, to make a comparative analysis between Romania and other countries from this point of view and finally to make some recommendations as regards the main guidelines that the negociators could follow in order to obtain better conditions for the new fiscal regime and implicitly a better turning into account of our natural resources to the benefit of the consumers.