IRANIAN ENERGY ECONOMICS
Year:2014 | Volume:3 | Issue:10|Papers Count:8

This paper deals with the process of developments in upstream oil and gas contracts during 1979-1991 and 1992-2013. We will understand that any type of conventional contracts had not been concluded during 1979-1991 but in the latter period, three generations of Iranian service contracts named, "Buy-Back Contracts" have been designed and implemented. Due to the necessity of designing new upstream contracts we intend to analyze that which of the conventional upstream contracts are compatible with the current sovereignty laws of oil and gas industry? Regarding the dominant regulations on this sector, what are the concerns and proposal framework of experts about the new contracts? Finally, it seems that the dominant legal requirements on oil and gas upstream sector with the principles of Buy-Back contracts are more convenient than other types of conventional contracts. Of course, the new contracts regarding the current legal capabilities, should be both the ability of answering to concerns of critics as well as suitable flexibility in terms of oil and gas fields of the country.

Energy consumption in various sectors of Iran economy is very significant, hence the necessity of reducing energy consumption in the economy considerrable. Improvement of total factor productivity can lead to lower production inputs as well as energy consumption. The aim of the present study is to survey the productivity shock affect on intensity of energy consumption during 1974-2010 in Iran. For this purpose, productivity shocks were separated to components of temporary and permanent with using Blanchard-Quah method. Then, the effect of temporary and permanent shocks of productivity on energy intensity was studied using structural vector autoregressive model. The results of model estimation show that temporary shocks of productivity are the main source of short-term changes in energy intensity. In addition, the permanent shocks of productivity will lead to reducing energy intensity in the long-run. Hence, to reduce energy consumption in Iran, total factor productivity growth should be improved.

In this paper we provide an introduction to real options in valuing investment projects. Since one of the real options applications is valuing oil and gas development projects with high uncertainty and considerable investment costs, in this research we have performed valuation of selected phases of "South Pars" gas field development project. "South Pars" gas field as the greatest independent gas field in the world is shared between Iran and Qatar and contains approximately half of the gas reserves of Iran. Based on the results of the model, using real options approach to valuing this project as compared to traditional valuation methods such as discounted cash flow, increases the project value meanwhile there is the possibility to identify optimal time of development.

In this study, we perform a parametric analysis of the energy structure, estimating the demand function of natural gas as well as assessing the factors affecting the short-run and long-run intensity of natural gas in Iran's energy-intensive industries during 2003-2010. The energy-intensive industries consume on average 94.5 percent of total energy and over 97.5 percent of natural gas of entire industry. Findings indicate that the intensity of natural gas consumption in short-run and long-run is equal to 0.1493 percent and 0.1144 percent, respectively, and the energy-intensive industries have approximately operate efficiently in natural gas consumption. Assessing the trend of contribution and intensity of natural gas of energy-intensive industries indicates that total share of natural gas of 10 industries has been increased in the whole period and the amount of natural gas intensity (on average) has been decreased in short and long-run. The most important factor in increaseing efficiency in long-run is the reduction of substitution effect, and the important factor in the overall reduction of intensity of natural gas in short-term is reduction of positive budget effect. Accordingly, we can conclude that the change in prices of all production inputs is an important factor in the change of the intensity of natural gas and the other components (production and technology) have far less influence in determining the intensity of natural gas.

Since energy resources are of prime importance and limitation in Iran's economic developments, specifying the quality and quantity of the effective factors in energy requirments are of particular significance. In this research, first the effective factors on energy request as well as the effect of financial development along with GDP are surveyed. Then the population are surveyed in energy consumption along with ARDL technique using with Granger causality in the period of (1363-1390). Meanwhile, the long-run relationship among variables were verified using the test group of Pesaran. For more detailed evaluation of the obtained results of this study, the method of "bootstrap" is used to compute the standard deviation, confidence interval, correct bias and the statistical inference. The results show that financial development has a positive and meaningful effect on the electricity consumption. Also it show that there is bi-directional causality between financial development and economic growth. and causality is from financial development to electricity consumption. Electricity consumption is affected by both economic and financial development. According to the results of the study, to achieve economic development, the demand for energy, in addition to financial development should carefully examined.

Economic growth is one of the main macroeconomic goals of most countries. It is therefore, of paramount importance to recognize the major factors that influence it. Financial development and trade openness are usually considered as two significant factors that affect economic growth in various ways. Using a vector error correction model (VECM), this study investigates the causality relationship between financial development, trade openness and economic growth in two major oil producing countries, Iran and Norway. The study period for Iran is 1967-2009, and for Norway is 1967-2006. The ratio of liquidity to GDP and the ratio of bank credit to the private sector to GDP have been used as two financial development indices. The trade openness and economic growth have been illustrated using trade intensity index and the GDP per capita. Findings of the study indicate that financial development and trade openness are both significant cause of economic growth in Iran in the short run. There is also a bi-directional causality between both indicators of financial development and economic growth in the long run. In Norwegian economy it is indicated that there is a significant causal relationship between bank credit to the private sector and economic growth in the short-term, and there also is a bi-directional causality between bank credit to the private sector and trade intensity in Norway in the long-term. Therefore, it can be concluded that according to the findings of this study, practically there is the supply side view in Iran, while there is the demand side view in Norway.

In this paper, we study the effects of energy price liberalization policies on the development of wind power usage in Iran. The economics of energy production from wind and gas power plants are compared. The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is used as an index to compare the plants’ cost of electricity production. LCOE is a well-known index to measure the economics of a plant once all the factors such as cost of air pollutants and exchange rates are to be considered. We show that by removing subsidies from conventional fuels in Iran, wind power plants are completely cost effective. Due to the opportunity cost of gasoline, power generation from wind can provide the ability to export gasoline. The benefit increases by designing and constructing of infrastructures required to develop the technology inside the country. It is worth mentioning that due to changes in exchange rates, policies should be directed towards developing the wind turbine technology inside the country which in turn provides job opportunities.

Asymmetric effects of oil shocks mean the difference between the positive and negative effects of oil shocks. Empirical studies show that these asymmetric effects can affect economic growth in oil-exporting countries as well as importing countries. In this regard, this paper tries to investigate the asymmetric effects of oil shocks on economic growth in oil-exporting countries (including Iran) during the period 1980-2011 by using hidden panel Cointegration. This approach, in addition to analyzing the long-term non-liner relationship between the variables, has another important capability for modeling asymmetry between different variables. Firstly, it has been shown that there is a long relationship between cumulative positive and negative components in crude oil prices and GDP in these countries by using Kao panel co-integration (hidden co-integration verification). Then, their long- run asymmetric relationships are measured by using dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS). The results of this study show the negative effects of oil shocks are more than the positive effects on the economic growth of oil-exporting countries.