an empirical exploration of the world oil price under the target zone model abstract this paper investigates the behavior of the world oil price based on the first generation target zone model using anecdotal data during the period of 1988 1999 we found that opec has tried to maintain a weak target zone regime for the oil price our econometric tests suggest that the movement of the oil price is not only manipulated by actual and substantial interventions by opec but also tempered by market participants expectations of interventions as a consequence the non linear model based on the target zone theory has very good forecasting ability when the oil price approaches the upper or lower limit of the band

geo economic approach to energy security measurement principal component analysis abstract currently there is no single accepted methodology for measuring energy security while the prevailing scientific attitude is that energy security should be defined and quantified in a way to be able to follow rapid developments on the global economic and geopolitical scene considering the fact that the national economies represent an integral part of a dynamic international economy where external shocks global financial and economic crisis political conflicts war etc have the impact on energy prices and energy security in general the paper proposes a new geo economic concept of energy security the new approach differs from the existing ones as regards the fact that in addition to basic indicators it takes into account sovereign credit rating as a measure of economic financial and political stability as one of the decisive factors which determines global energy trade and the ability of national economies to be stable and secure when it comes to energy determination and testing of geo economic index of energy security was conducted by using the principal component analysis in the european union and in the selected countries of the world over a period of ten years 2004 2013 the measured values of a newly proposed geo economic index of energy security demonstrate significant deviations from the data obtained by using usual indicators of energy security observed individually gdp per capita has the greatest impact on the change in final value of geo economic index of energy security while the impact of sovereign credit rating is slightly less the study has shown that the least impact on energy security is exerted by energy dependence which is traditionally used as a proxy indicator of energy security and production of energy from renewable sources which is defined by the eu policy as one of the methods for the improvement of energy security due to the results obtained it is necessary to conduct further analysis of sovereign credit rating and to review the type and significance of the impact of energy dependence indicator as a measure of energy security in general

measuring technical and environmental efficiency in a state contingent technology most developed countries support farming activities through policies that are tailored to meet their specific social economic and environmental objectives economic and environmental efficiency have recently become relevant targets of most of these policies whose sound implementation can be enhanced by monitoring farm performance from a multidimensional perspective this paper proposes farm level technical and environmental efficiency measures that recognize the stochastic conditions in which production takes place a state contingent framework is used to model production uncertainty an implementable representation of the technology is developed using data envelopment analysis the application focuses on a sample of catalan arable crop farms results suggest that technical efficiency is slightly lower in bad than in good growing conditions nitrogen pollution can decrease substantially more under good than bad growing conditions

a comparison of oil supply risks in eu us japan china and india under different climate scenarios for many countries the inflow of energy is essential to keep economies running oil is typically considered to be the most critical fuel as an input for the petro chemical and transportation sector and due to limited and less spread reserves in this study external oil supply risks are assessed for the period up to 2035 for the european union united states china japan and india being the five largest importers of oil in the world based on their current supplier portfolio scenarios are constructed for several climate policy and oil supply projections it is found that risks increase strongly when stringent climate policies are prevented from being implemented especially when a peak in oil supply is taken into account resulting in major oil supply disruptions china faces the lowest oil supply risks in most scenarios but the trends of india china and us converge over time due to increasing import dependency of china and india japan faces high risks since the country has the highest oil import dependency combined with a low oil import diversification for the eu all figures are strongly influenced by russia accounting for 32 of total imports and to a lesser extent norway 11 with high overall risks

oil vulnerability index of oil importing countries abstract this paper assesses the relative oil vulnerability of 26 net oil importing countries for the year 2004 on the basis of various indicators the ratio of value of oil imports to gross domestic product gdp oil consumption per unit of gdp gdp per capita and oil share in total energy supply ratio of domestic reserves to oil consumption exposure to geopolitical oil market concentration risks as measured by net oil import dependence diversification of supply sources political risk in oil supplying countries and market liquidity the approach using the principal component technique has been adopted to combine these individual indicators into a composite index of oil vulnerability such an index captures the relative sensitivity of various economies towards developments of the international oil market with a higher index indicating higher vulnerability the results show that there are considerable differences in the values of individual indicators of oil vulnerability and overall oil vulnerability index among the countries both inter and intraregional

quantifying the risk to crude oil imports in china an improved portfolio approach abstract china s rapid economic development caused a sharp increase in crude oil demand in 2011 china imported 254 million tons of crude oil in total with its dependence on imported oil reaching 56 5 this paper carries out a quantitative study on the risk of china s crude oil imports by establishing an assessment model which has two primary characteristics first the model not only uses portfolio theory to assess the risk to china s crude oil imports taking into consideration the effect of the diversified sources of imports but also introduces a correlation coefficient which considers the risks associated with importing oil from oversea sources second the correlation between import prices and global oil prices is analyzed with respect to each exporting country the ease of doing business index grading system is introduced in order to represent the risk weight for each exporting country because of these improvements the model provides operable methods for studying how global oil prices import volumes the diversification index and the political and economic situation of the exporting countries affects china s crude oil import risks as well as offers a method for implementing optimal crude oil import strategies it is concluded that china s crude oil import risks associated with the middle east are not as precarious as researchers traditionally reported among countries in the middle east there exist obvious disparities and differences affecting the kinds and types of risks involved therefore these risks should be treated piecemeal when performing an overall assessment of crude oil import risks in china it should also be noted that with respect to the middle east there is still room for china to optimize the mix of source countries in order to reduce risks china should raise the volume of imports coming from low risk countries as well as add new low risk exporting countries to its importing portfolio

oiling the palms restructuring of settlement schemes in malaysia and the new international trade regulations abstract the felda resettlement program in malaysia is internationally recognized as a success story in terms of cultivated area number of settlers and scope of vertical integration in the malaysian palm oil industry since the mid 1980s however a series of reorganizations of work and property rights in the settlement schemes have taken place it is argued here that the recent adjustments of felda are in accordance with the new rules for international regulation of agricultural production and trade in the wto international trade regulations increasingly influence the direction of socioeconomic and institutional struggles over rural reform programs in developing countries

prices and quality effects in cross sectional demand analysis a conceptual clarification of the sources and meaning of cross sectional price variability is used to motivate a theoretical and econometric framework for the estimation of cross sectional demand functions quality effects are distinguished from supply related price variability to identify cross sectional demand for disaggregated food commodities an empirical application using data from the 1977 78 nationwide food consumption survey indicates that parameter differences resulting from a failure to adjust cross sectional prices for quality effects are likely to be small for relatively homogenous disaggregated food commodities in demand analysis with cross sectional household budget data it is usually assumed that prices are constant allen and bowley prais and houthakker george and king given this assumption engel functions are estimated where expenditure or quantity is regressed on income or total expenditures family size and other demographic characteristics the assumption that cross sectional price effects are absent or are captured adequately by spatial and temporal dummy variables has not been evaluated empirically whether cross sectional price effects can be treated in this manner has implications for the specification of cross sectional demand functions as well as the estimation of engel functions there is a considerable literature on estimating price elasticities with cross sectional data most of the applications utilize timeseries cross sectional data annual or quarterly household consumption surveys and

emissions trading and profitability the swedish pulp and paper industry the purpose of this paper is to develop models with and without potential emissions trading and to compare industry profits under the two regimes the model in which emissions trading is permitted is a nonparametric industry frontier model in the spirit of fare et al 1992 it is relative to this model that industry profit is computed this profit is compared to the profit without emissions trading to give an estimate of the potential gains that can be realised by allowing for emissions trading the model which is applied to data for the swedish pulp and paper industry suggests that this industry would have had up to 6 1 higher profits in 1989 1990 if emissions trading had been used instead of individual permits to achieve the same total emissions target currently there is no permit trading in this industry so our results only model the potential gains that can be made

quantifying the supplier portfolio diversity of embodied energy strategic implications for strengthening energy resilience this paper investigates energy resilience of countries by quantifying the supplier diversification of both direct and embodied energy import in particular we quantify two approaches to diversify a country s supplier portfolio by lowering the dependency on each supplier portfolio diversification and by having embodied energy suppliers that are different from its direct energy suppliers portfolio differentiation we examine possibilities for strategic utilization of embodied energy trade to compensate for low diversity of direct energy trade for three types of fossil resources coal oil and gas we find that the diversity of embodied energy import is much greater than that of direct energy import of the three energy resources coal enables countries to adopt portfolio diversification and portfolio differentiation more than gas and oil our results suggest embodied energy can be considered as a transfer of energy resources across national borders that can directly benefit from the diversity of the world energy production by skipping the limited diversity of the world energy export

the theory and measurement of producer response under quotas tobin and houthakker s work on consumer behavior under quantity rationing has been extended by many authors especial ly through the use of duality theory this paper uses duality theory to extend the work on demand theory under rationing to the case of producer behavior under quotas these results permit estimation of otherwise unobservable market supply and demand structures the structure of the farm economy operating under a tobacco quota system is estimated and the theory is utilized to infer that the supply elasticity of tobacco would be about 7 0 if the quotas were removed estimates such as this are not normally attainable without the theor y outlined here even though they are essential for the evaluation of policy changes copyright 1993 by mit press

measuring the security of energy exports demand in opec economies one of the objectives of opec is the security of demand for the crude oil exports of its members achieving this objective is imperative with the projected decline in oecd countries crude oil demand among other crude oil demand shocks this paper focuses on determining the external crude oil demand security risks of opec member states in assessing these risks this study introduces two indexes the first index risky energy exports demand reed indicates the level of energy export demand security risks for opec members it combines measures of export dependence economic dependence monopsony risk and transportation risk the second index contribution to opec risk exposure core indicates the individual contribution of the opec members to opec s risk exposure this study utilises the disaggregated index approach in measuring energy demand security risks for crude oil and natural gas and involves a country level analysis with the disaggregated approach the study shows that opec s energy export demand security risks differ across countries and energy types

sustainability assessment of electricity generation technologies using weighted multi criteria decision analysis abstract solving the issue of environmental degradation due to the expansion of the world s energy demand requires a balanced approach the aim of this paper is to comprehensively rank a large number of electricity generation technologies based on their compatibility with the sustainable development of the industry the study is based on a set of 10 sustainability indicators which provide a life cycle analysis of the plants the technologies are ranked using a weighted sum multi attribute utility method the indicator weights were established through a survey of 62 academics from the fields of energy and environmental science our results show that large hydroelectric projects are the most sustainable technology type followed by small hydro onshore wind and solar photovoltaic we argue that political leaders should have a more structured and strategic approach in implementing sustainable energy policies and this type of research can provide arguments to support such decisions

co2 and energy efficiency of different heating technologies in the dutch glasshouse industry this paper uses data envelopment analysis tocompute input based technical efficiencymeasures and co2 and energy technicalefficiency of specialised vegetable firms inthe netherlands over the period 1991 1995 input based scale efficiency is also calculatedfor each firm these efficiency measures aregenerated for firms with different heatingtechnologies the empirical results indicatethat firms use energy quite efficiently and areless efficient in terms of co2 emissions differences in co2 energy efficiencyacross different technologies are not statistically significant in particular firms using traditional heating technologiesare less efficient in terms of co2 scaleadjustments can provide an importantcontribution to further efficiencyimprovements

application of the modified tobin s q to an uncertain energy saving project with the real options concept abstract this paper is to develop a modified tobin s q evaluation method which successfully combines the evaluation criteria of the traditional tobin s q and the real options this study provides flexible thinking for decision making criteria that is it clearly provides decision makers with a reference in choosing enter or exit strategies such as quantitative indicators references the proposed model introduces two variables stochastic process in continuous time and explores the impact of the occurrence of unexpected events on the project value so that it can more authentically response to the project value the studied issue deals with the firms that have not established energy saving equipment yet it attempts to figure out the optimal timing to adopt an energy saving investment project when it is beneficial and the optimal timing to terminate it when the continuous operation of that business is unprofitable the future discounted benefit cost ratio q follows the geometric brownian motion with the poisson jump process and the replacement of investment equipment except for the evaluation of energy saving equipment investment project the proposed model can be applied to other related project evaluation issues such as energy saving co 2 emission reduction or general investment projects

global oil gas depletion an overview abstract the world s production of conventional hydrocarbons will soon decline hydrocarbon shortages are inevitable unless radical changes occur in demand or in the supply of non conventional hydrocarbons the details are as follows global conventional oil supply is currently at political risk this is because the sum of conventional oil production from all countries in the world except the five main middle east suppliers is near the maximum set by physical resource limits should middle east suppliers decide to substantially curtail supply the shortfall cannot be replaced by conventional oil from other sources world conventional oil supply will soon be at physical risk the middle east countries have only little spare operational capacity and this will be increasingly called upon as oil production declines elsewhere large investments in middle east production if they occur could raise output but only to a limited extent a partial exception is iraq but even here there would be significant delays before prospects are confirmed and infrastructure is in place if demand is maintained and if large investments in middle east capacity are not made the world will face the prospect of oil shortages in the near term even with large investments resource limits will force middle east production to decline fairly soon and hence also global conventional oil production the date of this resource limited global peak depends on the size of middle east reserves which are poorly known and unreliably reported best estimates put the physical peak of global conventional oil production between 5 and 10 years from now the world contains large quantities of non conventional oil and various oil substitutes but the rapidity of the decline in the production of conventional oil makes it probable that these non conventional sources cannot come on stream fast enough to fully compensate the result will be a sustained global oil shortage for conventional gas the world s original endowment is probably about the same in energy terms as its endowment of conventional oil since less gas has been used so far compared to oil the world will turn increasingly to gas as oil declines but the global peak in conventional gas production is already in sight in perhaps 20 years and hence the global peak of all hydrocarbons oil plus gas is likely to be in about 10 or so years

analysis of oil export dependency of mena countries drivers trends and prospects abstract the purpose of this paper is to analyse how oil export dependencies of middle east and north african mena oil producers have evolved over the past two decades and to identify the main driving factors from an energy policy perspective the paper expresses the oil export dependency of each economy in terms of a multiplicative identity that captures effective export price export to primary oil supply ratio oil dependency and oil export intensity of the country using the data for 1980 2006 the evolution in these factors is investigated for seven mena countries and the influence of the above factors is decomposed using the laspeyres index the analysis shows that energy price and increasing energy intensity in the mena countries have influenced the overall oil export dependency reducing the energy intensity can improve oil export revenue share to gdp by 5 10 in most of the countries while iran can gain significantly by increasing its export volume

ena based evaluation of energy supply security comparison between the chinese crude oil and natural gas supply systems abstract energy has become a scarce global strategic resource and energy supply security is receiving increasing attention a common evaluation platform is necessary to systematically understand the supply security levels of different energy sources and help make the national energy strategy ecological network analysis ena is thus regarded as a useful common tool to systematically simulate evaluate and compare the supply security for different energy sources when considering the fact that modern energy systems have formed a complex global energy network through extensive energy trading based on the established ena platform we evaluated and compared china s crude oil and natural gas supply security from 2000 to 2012 to this end we assessed the overall security level investigated the relationship among different compartments within the network system determined the system s structure and analyzed the system s properties it was found that the chinese crude oil supply security level was higher than that of the natural gas supply and that the crude oil supply system was more mature in terms of multiple properties suggestions are proposed to improve the chinese energy supply security based on further scenario analysis including increasing domestic energy production controlling energy consumption diversifying foreign supply sources and strengthening the strategic reserve the ena based common platform can be used for the systematic evaluation and improvement of energy supply security and further support national energy policymaking for both developed and developing countries both energy importers and exporters

a framework to evaluate security of supply in the electricity sector security of electricity supply soes has become a major concern for regulators and policymakers over the last decade however most work focusses either more generally on energy security or on a single fuel we develop a comprehensive but flexible framework to assess the soes for a single jurisdiction taking into the account the specificities of electricity this framework has two aims i provide a snapshot of the situation to understand current weaknesses and determine what actions are required ii capture the evolution over time to evaluate progress and identify potential problems before they materialise the framework based on an extensive literature review consists of twelve dimensions that are critical for soes we develop metrics that capture the state and evolution of each dimension this framework is intended to be a management information tool for all stakeholders aimed at organising data and structuring its analysis to enable monitoring the evolution of the soes while also functioning as an early warning system by flagging potential future problems

the causal nexus between oil prices and equity market in the u s a regime switching model abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the causal link between monthly oil futures price changes and a sub grouping of s p 500 stock index changes the causal linkage between oil and stock markets is modelled using a vector autoregressive model with time varying parameters so as to reflect changes in granger causality over time a markov switching vector autoregressive ms var model in which causal link between the series is stochastic and governed by an unobservable markov chain is used for inferring time varying causality although we do not find any lead lag type granger causality the results based on the ms var model clearly show that oil futures price has strong regime prediction power for a sub grouping of s p 500 stock index during various sub periods in the sample while there is a weak evidence for the regime prediction power of a sub grouping of s p 500 stock indexes the regime prediction non causality tests on the ms var model show that both variables are useful for making inference about the regime process and that the evidence on regime prediction causality is primarily found in the equation describing a sub grouping of s p 500 stock market returns the evidence from the conditional non causality tests shows that past information on the other series fails to improve the one step ahead prediction for both oil futures and stock returns

dynamic and static behaviour with respect to energy use and investment of dutch greenhouse firms dutch greenhouse horticulture firms are energy intensive and major emitters of greenhouse gases this paper develops a theoretically consistent model that is able to describe the greenhouse firms behaviour regarding energy use and investments in energy technology the behaviour of the firm is modelled using a combination of a dynamic cost function and a static profit function framework the optimal quantity of energy is derived from the link between these two functions the model is applied to a panel of 97 dutch greenhouse firms over the period 2001 2008 the results show that most dutch greenhouse firms shift from being net electricity users to net electricity producers in the long term investing in energy capital contributes to reducing net energy use however it increases the quantity of carbon dioxide emissions due to an increase in electricity production a 1 increase of the price of gas reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 1 6

energy supply security and geopolitics a european perspective the security of energy supply to the eu is examined in the context of two storylines markets and institutions exemplifies an economically and politically integrated multilateral world with effective institutions and markets regions and empires involves a world broken up in rival political and economic blocks competing for resources and markets via political economic and military power it is shown that these storylines have a significant impact on the development of the energy market on the way in which energy supply may be secured and on the effect and applicability of the several types of instruments available the current eu is geared towards enlargement and a deepening of economic integration based on the tenets of the post 1945 multilateral world system the present world tends towards regions and empires and suggests that the eu may have to reorient its energy security policy energy policy must become an integral part of eu external trade and foreign relations and security policy the eu should develop its own strategy actively investing in dialogues with producer countries in the persian gulf and africa and with russia sustainable prosperity and governance in these regions will support eu energy security

indicators of security of natural gas supply in asia natural gas has become an increasingly valuable resource and a global commodity the demand for it has significantly increased japan korea and taiwan heavily rely on liquefied natural gas lng imports for their gas supplies from malaysia brunei indonesia australia and the middle east on the other hand countries like thailand and singapore import gas via trans border pipelines gas supply interruptions volatile gas prices transportation and distribution bottlenecks and a growing reliance on imports over longer distances have renewed interest on gas security in asia this paper examines the relative vulnerability to natural gas supply disruptions of seven gas importing countries in asia for year 2008 based on four indicators of security of gas supply a composite gas supply security index is estimated as an overall indication of gas vulnerability for our sample countries the results demonstrate that there are differences in the values of the overall indicator of gas vulnerability among countries and the assessment is useful in developing an effective strategy of natural gas supply security in countries in the asian region

energy security and improvements in the function of diversity indices taiwan energy supply structure case study abstract facing the risk and uncertainty inherent in social and economic development many countries have adopted an energy supply diversification strategy in their energy security policy to control the energy import risk and cost to ensure that sufficient energy can be obtained at an affordable price level diversification helps the energy system respond to external changes and shocks diversification can also lessen the vulnerability of a single energy source to supply shocks and the market power of various energy supply sources this study develops the diversity reliability index and co vary diversity reliability index based on the hirschman herfindahl and shannon wiener indices investigates the contribution of different energy sources to the energy system and analyzes the covariance between various energies and their impacts on energy security to determine the impact of energy diversity in reducing the risk of energy supply shortages and cost fluctuations

a quantitative analysis of low carbon society lcs measures in thai industrial sector abstract energy is a commodity which impacts heavily upon the competitiveness of a country in the global scale thus nations have begun to understand that utilization of energy affects its economic performance in recent times there has been a drive for global awareness on low carbon society lcs measures where carbon mitigation is at the forefront thus this paper analyses the lcs measures for the thai industrial sector thai industrial sector is the second highest co 2 emitting end use sector and contributes approximately 30 to the national income of thailand the total co 2 emission from end use sectors in 2010 was 119 mton co 2 and approximately 38 constituted industrial sector emissions the primary objective of this research study is to quantitatively analyse the carbon mitigation possible in the thai industrial sector and the co benefits which accrue along with mitigation in various policy pathway scenarios thai industrial sector was modeled using asia pacific integrated model aim enduse three groups of scenarios under lcs emission tax and reduction target principles were modeled along with the bau case results show that lcs scenarios are capable of cumulative mitigation of approximately 35 by 2050 in comparison to the bau case and the predominant technologies are the 2nd generation biomass and the ccs technology the emission tax scenarios where tax rates of 50 100 200 and 500 usd t co 2 were enforced show a maximum of 55 cumulative mitigation by 2050 even though this reduction is higher than the lcs scenarios there is no shift to long term renewable or sustainable technologies in the emission tax scenarios the same applies to reduction target scenarios as well the co benefits which were measured along the themes of energy security and local air pollutant mitigation show maximum benefits accruing to the lcs scenarios where renewable fuel share increases whilst primary energy intensity and carbon intensity decreases the lcs scenarios also show a mitigation of local air pollutants such as so 2 and particulate matter

an entry and exit model on the energy saving investment strategy with real options this paper presents an improved decision model based on the real options approach presented by ansar and sparks 2009 for the firms that have not yet established energy saving equipment under the entry and exit strategies furthermore the proposed model takes account of the inevitable equipment renewal and the occurrence of unexpected events under the poisson jump process the timing for terminating an investment when continuous operations of that business are unprofitable is also explored to realize the optimal timing of implementing the energy saving strategy the future discounted benefit b follows the geometric brownian motion with the poisson jump process and the replacement of investment equipment a numerical analysis is followed by a sensitivity study of various parameters to better realize their impacts on the entry and exit thresholds the results show that for the jump case the higher probability of occurrence of unfavorable events will result in a higher entry threshold and lower exit threshold investors are forced to request higher benefit thresholds to cover the higher probability of losses brought by unfavorable events

low carbon society scenario analysis of transport sector of an emerging economy the aim enduse modelling approach abstract the transport sector of a country is the backbone driving the economy forward thailand s land transport sector is modelled using the aim enduse which is a recursive dynamic optimization model based on bottom up modelling principle the travel demand is divided into two major categories which are passenger travel and freight travel the objective of this paper is to analyse the mitigation possible through low carbon society lcs measures and emission tax et two scenario clusters are devised along with the bau case the lcs scenario cluster has three designed scenarios which are lcs l lcs m and lcs h the emission tax et cluster has four scenarios where the taxes of 50 100 200 and 500 usd t co2 are implemented along with this the marginal abatement costs mac of the counter measures cms and the co benefits in terms of energy security productivity and air pollutant mitigation are also assessed results show that lcs scenarios are possible of mitigating up to 1230 mt co2 cumulatively from 2010 to 2050 in terms of macs new vehicles play a pivotal role along with hybrid vehicles the average abatement cost aac assessment shows that the aac of lcs h scenario is in the order of 100 usd t co2 all the lcs and et scenarios show an enhancement in energy security and also a threefold increase in productivity there is distinct mitigation in terms of air pollutants from the transport sector as well

london and beyond taking a closer look at urban energy policy this paper considers the field of urban energy policy a neglected yet important topic cities account for approximately two thirds of global primary energy consumption creating significant benefits and costs as a result there has been growing interest in the contribution of cities to global energy policy issues such as climate change but a number of significant questions remain e g how do energy policy processes differ between national and urban scales and how can cities contribute most effectively to global policy goals we present the results of interviews with key stakeholders in london to illustrate some unique features of the urban energy policy cycle we then take a wider view proposing a research agenda with three key goals describing the global variety of urban energy consumption and policy understanding the resulting diversity in responsibility vulnerability and capacity and developing shared procedures and solutions tackling these questions is vital if cities are to contribute fully to current energy policy efforts

time varying granger causality tests for applications in global crude oil markets abstract this paper proposes time varying granger causality tests based on the tests developed by hong 2001 and two dynamic correlation estimators i e rolling correlation and dynamic conditional correlation multivariate garch here called the rolling hong and dcc mgarch hong tests respectively the proposed tests are used to examine time varying information spillover among global crude oil markets the results provide empirical evidence of time varying information spillover in particular the instantaneous causal effects of dubai and tapis crudes on brent and wti become stronger when a major event or events occur in major oil producing countries such events include the iraq war in march 2003 opec s announcement of a record production cut in december 2008 and the libyan civil war in early 2011 and consistent with previous studies wti and brent play dominant roles in global crude markets impulse response analysis shows that market information has a positive influence on the spillover effect in global crude oil markets moreover the dcc mgarch hong test consistently leads the rolling hong test which indicates that the former performs better

energy security under de carbonization scenarios an assessment framework and evaluation under different technology and policy choices abstract how would a low carbon energy transformation affect energy security this paper proposes a framework to evaluate energy security under long term energy scenarios generated by integrated assessment models energy security is defined as low vulnerability of vital energy systems delineated along geographic and sectoral boundaries the proposed framework considers vulnerability as a combination of risks associated with inter regional energy trade and resilience reflected in energy intensity and diversity of energy sources and technologies we apply this framework to 43 scenarios generated by the message model as part of the global energy assessment including one baseline scenario and 42 low carbon scenarios where the global mean temperature increase is limited to 2 c over the pre industrial level by and large low carbon scenarios are associated with lower energy trade and higher diversity of energy options especially in the transport sector a few risks do emerge under low carbon scenarios in the latter half of the century they include potentially high trade in natural gas and hydrogen and low diversity of electricity sources trade is typically lower in scenarios which emphasize demand side policies as well as non tradable energy sources nuclear and renewables while diversity is higher in scenarios which limit the penetration of intermittent renewables

quest for middle east oil the us versus the asia pacific region abstract two very powerful geopolitical factors will decisively determine whether the quest for middle east oil mainly gulf oil could enhance the global oil security or could lead to oil supply disruptions and also instability and conflict in the asia pacific region the two factors are the united states growing dependence on oil imports from the middle east and the asia pacific region s thirst for oil and the increasingly likely chinese dependence on oil from the region the asia pacific countries are increasingly growing concerned about their ability to supply enough oil to fuel future economic growth the region s phenomenal economic growth up to july 1997 and its economic recovery since then and its steadily rising energy needs lend urgency to the question of how the region would meet its considerable energy challenges this paper will endeavour to analyze the impact of this growing dependence on middle east oil on global oil supplies the price of oil and global oil security it will argue that such dependence on a volatile region like the middle east and the perception of scarcer energy resources in the asia pacific region have the potential to lead to conflict in both regions unless these issues are dealt with in geoeconomic rather than geostrategic terms the paper will strongly express the view that potential conflicts can be resolved not by force but through markets and investment and also through the diversification of energy sources and the promotion of alternative energy development and use across the region

conceptual proposals for measuring the impact of international regimes on energy security abstract the paper proposes two concepts to assess the effect of international regimes on energy security existing indicators focus mainly on state level factors excluding international influences international relation scholars on the other hand see a clear connection between international regimes and stable energy relations international regimes stabilise energy relations by providing frameworks for negotiations defining controlling and sanctioning compliance and allowing the actors to engage in package deals the researcher needs to include these factors in a complete assessment of political energy security risks as first step the paper uses the effectiveness of control mechanisms as basis for such consideration it refers specifically to international arbitration as the most important control mechanism in international energy relations the simplest measurement option is the share of a county s energy imports covered by a certain regime the paper applies the oslo potsdam solution to account for outcome effectiveness it applies a variant of the international regimes data base protocol to account for effective regime structures in a last section the paper proposes some possible paths for future research

technical efficiency and co2 abatement policies in the dutch glasshouse industry this paper develops a short run microeconomic simulation model of the dutch glasshouse industry in order to investigate the relation between technical efficiency and marginal abatement costs of co2 emission the model is also used to determine the effects of an emission tax and systems of tradable and non tradable quota for groups of firms with different rates of technical efficiency the results show that marginal abatement costs are very responsive to changes in technical efficiency furthermore it is found that firms with a low technical efficiency are faced with a higher profit reduction under different abatement policies than firms with a high technical efficiency

implications of a long term increase in oil prices for tourism it is expected that global oil prices will increase in the future assessing the overall economic impacts on tourism is difficult as oil price rises will be concomitant with global changes in other commodity prices exchange rates and incomes a general equilibrium perspective is therefore presented in this paper the model couples a global general equilibrium model with a purpose built cge model of new zealand which focuses on describing tourism supply and demand in some detail the results indicate a decrease in real gross national disposable income of 1 7 for a doubling of oil price and a 9 reduction in the real value of tourism exports as a result of segment specific price increases and differing income and exchange rate effects and elasticities the reduction in demand for tourism in new zealand by 18 segments differs substantially the greatest reduction in demand is observed for tourists from the united kingdom

oil prices speculation and fundamentals interpreting causal relations among spot and futures prices abstract a consensus that the world oil market is unified begs the question where do innovations in oil prices enter the market here we investigate where changes in the price of crude oil originate and how they spread by examining causal relationships among prices for crude oils from north america europe africa and the middle east on both spot and futures markets results indicate that innovations first appear in spot prices for dubai fateh and spread to other spot and futures prices while other innovations first appear in the far month contract for west texas intermediate and spread to other exchanges and contracts links between spot and futures markets are relatively weak and this may have allowed the long run relationship between spot and future prices to change after september 2004 together these results suggest that market fundamentals initiated a long term increase in oil prices that was exacerbated by speculators who recognized an increase in the probability that oil prices would rise over time

explaining differences in milk quota values the role of economic efficiency this paper explores the relationship between milk quota values and economic efficiency in order to analyze current government interventions in quota allocations among producers for this purpose we estimate a short run variable cost function using a panel of spanish dairy farms quota values are then decomposed into economic efficiency price and scale effects in order to assess the relative influence of these factors on quota values we find that efficiency is important in explaining quota values but is uncorrelated with observable farm characteristics this casts doubts on the government s ability to allocate quotas to efficient farms in the way a well functioning quota market does

spillover effects in energy futures markets price discovery in crude oil and refined oil products has been extensively undertaken in organised futures markets for over a decade now there are two dominant such markets today the first one in the new york mercantile exchange and the second in london s international petroleum exchange with the demise of opec as the leading price setter for crude and products nymex light sweet crude and brent crude have usurped the role of benchmark grades for price setting to date considerable work has been done to scrutinise the degree to which these two markets price efficiently but little with regard to the way the two markets interact participants in these markets move with relative ease from one market to the other and usually take positions in both of them it is of interest therefore to investigate the information transmission mechanism by looking at spillover effects and perhaps identify which market is the true price leader this paper is a first attempt to look at such a problem in the energy market although similar studies have been done on stock market indices it is found that substantial spillover effects do exist when both markets are trading simultaneously although ipe morning prices seem to be considerably affected by the close of the previous day on nymex q 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

evolution of the world crude oil market integration a graph theory analysis this paper investigates the evolution of the world crude oil market and the pricing power for major oil producing and oil consuming countries using graph theory a minimal spanning tree for the world crude oil market is constructed and some empirical results are given the integration of the world crude oil market is verified furthermore the world crude oil market is characterised as a geographical and organisational structure the crude oil markets of adjacent countries or regions tend to link together while opec is well integrated we also found that the links in the south and north american region and the african region are relatively stable the crude oil markets in the u s angola and saudi arabia take up the core with a higher betweenness centrality and lower farness whereas the markets in the east and southeast asian countries are on the fringe finally the degree of globalisation for the world crude oil market is becoming further entrenched verified by a decreasing normalised tree length hence its systemic risk may increase due to the future uncertainty of world politics

indicators for energy security the concept of energy security is widely used yet there is no consensus on its precise interpretation in this research we have provided an overview of available indicators for long term security of supply sos we distinguished four dimensions of energy security that relate to the availability accessibility affordability and acceptability of energy and classified indicators for energy security according to this taxonomy there is no one ideal indicator as the notion of energy security is highly context dependent rather applying multiple indicators leads to a broader understanding incorporating these indicators in model based scenario analysis showed accelerated depletion of currently known fossil resources due to increasing global demand coupled with increasing spatial discrepancy between consumption and production international trade in energy carriers is projected to have increased by 142 in 2050 compared to 2008 oil production is projected to become increasingly concentrated in a few countries up to 2030 after which production from other regions diversifies the market under stringent climate policies this diversification may not occur due to reduced demand for oil possible benefits of climate policy include increased fuel diversity and slower depletion of fossil resources

oil supply and oil politics deja vu all over again president bush has identified us dependence on imported oil as an urgent energy economic and national security concern the president s energy plan promotes the development of domestic resources based on the assumption that economic incentives and the opening of frontier areas for exploration will increase domestic production if realized this will reduce dependence on imported oil and reduce opec s ability to affect aggregate oil supply and price the evidence suggests however that this policy will not increase significantly us production of crude oil will not reduce significantly opec s influence and it will distort the us macroeconomy even if allowed production from the arctic national wildlife refuge will have a negligible impact on the world oil markets further subsidies to the oil industry will divert resources from other more productive investments conservation and energy efficiency merit greater emphasis in us energy policy given their ability to reduce the use of cost effective and environmentally beneficial ways

struggling with honduran poverty the environmental consequences of natural resource based development and rural transformations abstract export growth through agricultural diversification has been the basis of development strategies in central america since ww ii this article examines the impact of this strategy on inequality impoverishment and environmental degradation in southern honduras analysis centers on the most important exports promoted in the region cotton cattle and recently so called nontraditionals most significantly shrimp mariculture along the gulf of fonseca the study demonstrates the systemic interconnections among the dynamics of agricultural development patterns of capitalist accumulation rural inequality and impoverishment and problems of environmental destruction conclusions point to the need for development policies to directly address the extremes of wealth and poverty in order to reverse environmental decline

regime switching model of us crude oil and stock market prices 1859 to 2013 this paper examines the relationship between us crude oil and stock market prices using a markov switching vector error correction model and a monthly data set from 1859 to 2013 the sample covers the entire modern era of the petroleum industry which typically begins with the first drilled oil well in titusville pennsylvania in 1858 we estimate a two regime model that divides the sample into high and low volatility regimes based on the variance covariance matrix of the oil and stock prices we find that the high volatility regime more frequently exists prior to the great depression and after the 1973 oil price shock caused by the organization of petroleum exporting countries the low volatility regime occurs more frequently when the oil markets fell largely under the control of the major international oil companies from the end of the great depression to the first oil price shock in 1973 using the national bureau of economic research business cycle dates we also find that the high volatility regime more likely occurs when the economy experiences a recession

long term diversification paths and energy transitions in europe the concentration of the energy mixes of eight european countries is measured latecomers historically enjoyed lower levels of concentration in their energy mixes early comers followed an inverted u path of concentration latecomers a u path a time effect and size effect explains the different patterns small energy consuming countries will be able to do faster transitions

crude oil import policy of turkey historical analysis of determinants and implications since 1968 turkey is one of the most energy import dependent countries in the world suffering deeply from the economic and strategic burdens of oil importation our purpose is to determine the factors behind the crude oil import policy of turkey and to measure their contribution to a well organized import strategy we implemented a principle component analysis to construct an oil import vulnerability index oivi based on four factors which are crude oil import dependency of primary energy consumption crude oil import bill as a share of gross domestic product gdp non diversification of import sources and share of oil in total energy import the contribution of these factors to the oivi is found to be approximately equal while an overall deterioration in the oivi has been observed during periods of increasing oil prices better diversification of oil import sources has lead to significant improvements we suggest turkish policy makers implement sound policies emphasizing diversification of crude oil import sources and reduction of the share of crude oil in primary energy imports to increase energy supply security this study has also demonstrated that it is possible to construct an index representing crude oil vulnerability caused by import dependency

the impact of the asian crisis on the behavior of us and international petroleum prices the strong long run relationships among the petroleum spot and futures prices have weakened after the asian crisis as manifested in less co integration among these prices in the post crisis period the directional causal relationships have either changed the direction as in the case of wti crude or weakened somewhat as in the case of nymex gasoline and heating oil these changes should complicate the job of those who try to benefit from predicting the movements of petroleum prices after the asian crisis in the international gasoline spot markets movements in the nymex gasoline price are found to precede movements in the gulf coast and rotterdam gasoline prices in the pre crisis period and the movements of these prices and those of the singapore price in the post crisis period implying that the nymex price is the gasoline leader in both periods the monday friday day of the week effect is only significant for the nymex gasoline 1 month and 3 month futures prices and the gulf coast gasoline spot economic and political shocks related to the spot prices have greater impacts on all prices than shocks related to the futures prices regardless of the petroleum type and the time period

modeling and forecasting the volatility of petroleum futures prices we investigate volatility models and their forecasting abilities for three types of petroleum futures contracts traded on the new york mercantile exchange west texas intermediate crude oil heating oil 2 and unleaded gasoline and suggest some stylized facts about the volatility of these futures markets particularly in regard to volatility persistence or long memory properties in this context we examine the persistence of market returns and volatility simultaneously using the following arfima garch class models arima garch arfima garch arfima igarch and arfima figarch although the arfima figarch model better captures long memory properties of returns and volatility the out of sample analysis indicates no unique model for all three types of petroleum futures contracts suggesting that investors should be careful when measuring and forecasting the volatility risk of petroleum futures markets

vulnerability of the economy to the potential disturbances of energy supply a logic based model with application to the case of china the disturbances of energy supply that may result from both external and domestic events create a significant threat for national economy due to potential impacts on the productivity employment and overall economic growth building scenarios of the economy s vulnerability to these disturbances is delicate because of the significant number of interrelated factors that should be taken into consideration in this paper a logic based model lbm is developed which allows for defining exploring and assessing the determinants and the indicators of the economy s vulnerability related to the energy supply disturbances within a coherent scenarios assessment framework the proposed model is illustrated with the case of china after developing the general framework three particular scenarios are investigated based on the case study the performance and limitations of the model are analyzed and its ability to evaluate national energy policies is discussed finally some recommendations for further improvements are made

economic impacts of higher oil and gas prices the role of international trade for germany the analysis concentrates on direct and indirect price increases induced shifts in international trade and structural changes in the oil importing economies the paper at hand asks whether a stabilizing effect via international trade and domestic structural change on the gdp of oil importing countries can be observed if a permanent oil price increase occurs at least for germany structural change from consumer goods to investment goods industry and an improvement of international competitiveness limit negative impacts of increased energy prices analysis is based on the extensive and disaggregated global ginfors model and the detailed inforge model for the german economy

conceptualizing energy security abstract energy security 1 is one of the main targets of energy policy however the term has not been clearly defined which makes it hard to measure and difficult to balance against other policy objectives we review the multitude of definitions of energy security they can be characterized according to the sources of risk the scope of the impacts and the severity filters in the form of the speed size sustention spread singularity and sureness of impacts using a stylized case study for three european countries we illustrate how the selection of conceptual boundaries along these dimensions determines the outcome this can be avoided by more clearly separating between security of supply and other policy objectives this leads us to the definition of energy security as the continuity of energy supplies relative to demand

market efficiency of oil spot and futures a mean variance and stochastic dominance approach this paper examines the market efficiency of oil spot and futures prices by using both mean variance mv and stochastic dominance sd approaches based on the west texas intermediate crude oil data for the sample period 1989 2008 we find no evidence of any mv and sd relationships between oil spot and futures indices this infers that there is no arbitrage opportunity between these two markets spot and futures do not dominate one another investors are indifferent to investing spot or futures and the spot and futures oil markets are efficient and rational the empirical findings are robust to each sub period before and after the crises for different crises and also to portfolio diversification

energy policymaking in denmark implications for global energy security and sustainability denmark is arguably the most energy secure and sustainable country in the organization of economic cooperation and development oecd the country has reduced its dependence on foreign sources of energy to zero and become self sufficient in its own energy production and use offering important lessons for other nations around the world this study explores the core of denmark s successful approach a commitment to energy efficiency prolonged taxes on energy fuels electricity and carbon dioxide and incentives for combined heat and power chp and wind turbines through these commitments the study shows how denmark transitioned from being almost 100 percent dependent on imported fuels such as oil and coal for their power plants in 1970 to becoming a net exporter of fuels and electricity today the country leads the world in terms of exportation of wind energy technology with a hold on roughly one third of the world market for wind turbines it was able to phase out the use of virtually all oil fired power plants in less than five years and implemented a progressive moratorium on future coal fired power plants in the 1990s their most recent strategy seeks to achieve 30 percent of total energy supply from renewable energy by 2025

the honduran palm oil industry employing lessons from malaysia in the search for economically and environmentally sustainable energy solutions abstract honduras is actively seeking ways to expand its palm oil industry for the purpose of processing biofuels for both internal consumption and export this would be a critical juncture for honduras presenting an opportunity to move beyond the export of basic agricultural commodities and a history of path dependency and weak economic indicators in order to glean lessons on how to approach palm oil expansion in the most effective manner i turn to the malaysian case once impoverished malaysia expanded plantations promoted technological innovation and provided financial incentives and tax structures to develop one of the most sophisticated palm oil industries in the world in this paper the insights to be gleaned from the malaysian case are organized into three key themes governance investing in research and human capital and the environment recommendations for honduras include increased collaboration with funding bodies ngos and universities to foster research fiscal policies that support the development of a domestic market and key environmental controls to ensure sustainability in the long term these insights offer practical and pragmatic solutions not only for honduras but also the wider community of small tropical developing nations seeking to develop a viable biofuels sector

energy security measurement a sustainable approach abstract the main objective of this paper is to define new energy security indicator with the long term sustainability and to test it in a sample of 28 european union countries for the period 1990 2012 as well as to determine the level of impact of six different indicators on energy security the previous methodologies for measuring of energy security have been mainly focused on security of supply while not taking into account environmental indicators and the social component the newly proposed indicator energy security index differs from the existing measuring methods precisely in a way that it includes environmental and social aspects energy security index recorded a decline in values in most countries in the period 1990 2000 in the period 2000 2008 the values became positive and after 2008 some countries reported again gradual deterioration the index value varies by year and the biggest positive changes were recorded in the case of the netherlands slovenia and spain the four economically strongest eu countries the united kingdom france germany and italy recorded significantly less fluctuations in energy security over 23 years compared to other countries the data for france and denmark show that an increased share of energy from nuclear and renewable sources can compensate even increased energy import dependence the assessment of impact of individual indicators on energy security index was conducted by using principal component analysis and showed that energy intensity gdp per capita and carbon intensity have the greatest impact the countries of the former eastern bloc are facing particular challenges of energy security which is primarily related to the rapid economic growth and at the same time a high degree of dependence on import of energy generating products in terms of energy security the most stable transition was reported in hungary and poland

assessing the determinants of sids pattern toward sustainability a statistical analysis abstract the aim of this paper is twofold first we assess the sids pattern towards energy sustainability second we try to understand the macro factors that drive policy makers in setting the optimal framework for investments in renewable energy sources the empirical analysis is performed on a large dataset of 136 countries and 41 variables observed in the time span 2000 2011 countries analyzed include a sample of 12 sids bahrain cuba dominican republic fiji islands guyana haiti jamaica maldives mauritius papua new guinea singapore trinidad and tobago distributed worldwide due to the large number of variables collected and their high degree of collinearity the first step of the analysis concerns the implementation of a principal component analysis in order to extract factors explaining the majority of variation of the original variables in the second step three different scenarios of modeling are designed to examine the key factors promoting res investments in a first scenario we employ a pooled regression model in the second a fixed effect model and in the third a random effect model is estimated the main results of empirical analysis could be unexpected at first sight they show in fact that sids are not on a energy sustainability path as in the case of other developing countries policy makers prefer to use resources to improve economic aspects of development leaving behind issues related to the environmental protection the use of res and sustainability in order to improve economic and environmental resilience of sids a synergy between local governments and international organizations to promote the investments in res is needed moreover an energy plan that clearly supports the generation of energy from res is recommended finally policy makers should strength their commitment in raising population s awareness toward a green energy generation such synergic interventions will allow sids to achieve a more sustainable development