for example, is viewed by many to have lacked competition and effectively resulted in the sales of shares in oil companies at very low prices (Goldman 1999).

These concerns are longstanding, particularly in the upstream oil, gas, and mining sectors where billions of dollars of wealth can transfer hands. It is notable that the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) requires disclosure of information related to the award or transfer of licenses for exploration, development, and production, including a description of the process for transferring or awarding the license; the technical and financial criteria used; information about the recipient(s) of the license that has been transferred or awarded, including consortium members where applicable; and any non-trivial deviations from the applicable legal and regulatory framework governing license transfers and awards. Where licenses are awarded through a bidding process, the government is required to disclose the list of applicants and the bid criteria (EITI 2013). Such disclosure represents international good practice and should be adopted by all governments.

# **Multi-Country Estimations by International Organizations**

The IEA (2014b), IMF (Clements et al. 2013), and OECD (2013a) have carried out some of the most extensive multi-country estimates of government support to fossil fuels in recent years. Depending on the organization, energy source, and the country, various approaches are used—price gap, hidden cost, and inventory. The three organizations cover oil, natural gas, and coal, and the IEA and IMF also cover electricity. The IEA estimates for fossil fuels cover only subsidies at the level of final consumption and measure them through the price-gap approach. Therefore, the IEA’s estimation represents very much a lower bound.

The IMF produces two sets of “subsidy” estimations, which it refers to as “pre-tax” and “post-tax.” The reference point for the IMF’s pre-tax subsidies excludes taxes on consumers, such as fuel excise tax, VAT, and GST. In tabulating its pre-tax subsidies, the IMF combines estimates obtained by price-gap measurements; budgetary and tax expenditure support for producers in OECD countries for petroleum products and coal (mostly using the OECD’s data); and hidden costs in the power sector in 40 countries, inclusive of hydropower and nuclear power where they exist (based on a mix of IMF and World Bank sources). As such, the IMF’s pre-tax subsidy calculations are not strictly comparable across countries, nor are they confined solely to fossil fuels, although the contribution of energy sources not derived from fossil fuels should be small.

In terms of country coverage, the IMF reports petroleum product subsidies for 176 countries, some of which have been found not to have pre-tax subsidies. The most recent IEA analysis identified 40 countries that subsidized fossil fuel consumption in 2013 based on the IEA’s longstanding program of work that monitors energy pricing across the world. The IEA estimates cover subsidies to fossil fuels consumed by end-users (households and businesses) and subsidies to fossil-fuel inputs to electric power generation. The IEA notes that it believes that more than 40 countries had fossil fuel subsidies in 2013, but there was insufficient information available to perform the necessary calculations to confirm their existence with sufficient confidence for inclusion in its publication. The two numbers—176 versus 40— are not directly comparable, in part because types of subsidies covered are different. The numbers of countries covered by the IMF for other types of energy are smaller than 176, and as few as 39 for coal.

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