Environmental regulation and safety outcomes: Evidence from energy pipelines in Canada

This paper investigates the effects of more stringent environmental regulation—specifically, paying amortized abandonment fees as accrued and absolute liability for adverse events—on the safety performance of Canadian oil and gas pipelines. We construct a comprehensive dataset that includes pipeline adverse events, throughput, and regulatory intensiveness for fourteen federally-regulated energy pipelines in Canada. We find that abandonment fees are significantly and positively associated with pipeline events. On average, a 1% increase in abandonment fees is associated with 1.3 more events per month. In contrast, establishing absolute liability is associated with significant decreases in the number of pipeline events: on average, absolute liability is responsible for eliminating 80% of quarterly events for Canadian major oil pipelines and 20% for smaller pipelines.     

世界油气工业空间结构模式初探

从世界油气资源的空间结构入手，根据其与社会经济空间结构的耦合关系，提出世界油气工业三大空间结构模式，即协同发展(就近供应)模式、通道发展模式和点轴发展模式，以期能为我国油气工业的发展提供有益的思路和借鉴。     

Market-based regulation of natural gas pipelines

We argue that some forms of market-based regulation allowed within current statutory constraints can outperform traditional rate-setting regulation now used for interstate natural gas pipelines. In particular, a resale market for pipeline capacity rights can yield efficient choices in the short term, even for a natural monopoly pipeline. We also propose applying market mechanisms to setting the pipeline's original rates. The paper reviews experimental evidence on the performance of some of the proposed rate-setting institutions and describes some specific proposals made by pipelines that are consistent with those described here.     

The interpretive flexibility of oil and gas pipelines: Case studies from Southeast Asia and the Caspian Sea

Based on research interviews and field research, this article explores the “interpretive flexibility” of two large pipelines: the $4.6 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline exporting petroleum from the Caspian Sea near Azerbaijan and then traversing parts of Georgia and Turkey; and parts of the $14.2 billion Trans-ASEAN Gas Pipeline (TAGP) Network connecting the gas reserves of Indonesia, Myanmar, and Thailand with each other and Singapore. Each pipeline is the product of differing interpretations and ideologies, meaning they have “interpretive flexibility” because their meaning is under constant interpretation. The article depicts four differing interpretive frames for each pipeline, revealing the views of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, government of Thailand, government of Myanmar, and state-owned energy Malaysian energy company Petronas for the TAGP, and the World Bank Group, British Petroleum, European Union, and the government of Azerbaijan for the BTC. The article finds that pipelines not only mark the physical landscape and distribute energy fuels, they also transfer what were once customary public resources into private hands, concentrate political power, facilitate human rights abuses and possible acts of genocide, become intertwined in national discourses of revitalization and strength, and validate distinct approaches to economic and social development.     

Economic impact assessment of mega infrastructure pipeline projects

The economic development features for the decades after the Second World War provide evidence that investments to new infrastructures are a key driver in strengthening the national economy and enhancing nation’s productivity, as it creates economic benefits and additional income. However, the decision for fund allocation and investments in mega infrastructure pipeline projects often must be made in conditions that are much more fraught with uncertainty. The key question in such decisions is if the economic impact caused by the new project could be able to essentially boost the economy by creating new jobs and generating new income on one hand; and which are the business sectors expected to archive the benefits of this investment. This article deals with the estimation of the mega infrastructure pipeline project economic effects in economy. The methodological framework is based on input–output approach providing quantitative estimations about the economic impact of the project in terms of new income and jobs. The numerical application deals with the assessment of a cross-border crude oil pipeline project, connecting the ports of Burgas (Bulgaria) and Alexandroupolis (Greece), establishing a new transportation corridor for the crude oil from Black Sea to Southeast Mediterranean.     

Pipeline Geopolitics: Subaquatic Materials and the Tactical Point

ABSTRACT

This paper starts from the proposition that studies of geopolitics need to address the political significance of spaces above and below the apparently twodimensional or flat surface of the land and sea. However, we depart from the view that such spaces should be defined by their verticality or conceived as three-dimensional volumes. Instead, the argument stresses the importance of attending to the relations between physical and biological things, and the ways in which the proximity of things is both mediated and supplemented by legal, and scientific and political practice. The empirical focus of the paper is a specific geopolitical puzzle. How did a short section of the route of a transnational gas pipeline, the 3500km Southern Gas Corridor, come to be a site or ‘tactical point’ at which the construction of the pipeline could be disrupted? Our contention is that any analysis of this political question must address not only the contested relations between states, corporations and civil society, but also the potential tension and interference between the horizontal networked geopolitics of pipelines and their subaquatic and subterranean construction. The subaquatic turns out not to be volume but a space of situated encounters between disparate materials.     

Pricing and Access under National Competition Policy: The Case of the Natural Gas Pipeline Sector

This paper reviews the development of open access and deregulation of trunk pipeline natural gas transportation in Australia and the United States. It investigates Australian policy developments in the setting of reference tariffs for firm service, but argues that the institutional arrangements for granting third party access, and the pricing of that access on a spot or interruptible basis, are at least as important as tariffs for firm service. The paper concludes that, in the absence of an established pipeline network, pipelines may have little incentive to price their excess capacity efficiently. In this case, attempts to promote an efficient allocative outcome through privatisation and open access in Australia are unlikely to be as successful as they have been in North America.     

Diffusion of Kyoto's clean development mechanism

To date, developed countries can only tap mitigation opportunities in developing countries by investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Yet CDM investments have so far failed to reach all of the high-potential sectors identified in IPCC reports. This raises doubts about whether the CDM will be able to generate an adequate supply of credits from the limited areas where it has proved successful. Our paper examines the current trajectory of potential mitigation entering the CDM pipeline and projects it forward under the assumption that the diffusion of the CDM will follow a path similar to other kinds of innovations. Projections are then compared to pre-CDM predictions of the mechanism's potential market size used to assess Kyoto's cost, in order to discern whether limits on the types of project entering the pipeline will also limit the eventual supply of certified emission reductions (CERs). The main finding of the paper is that the mechanism is on track to deliver an average annual flow of roughly 700 million CERs by the close of 2012 and nearly to 1100 million tons by 2020. Parameter tests suggest that currently identified CDM investments will exceed early model predictions of the potential market for CDM projects.     

The role of excess capacity in determining market power in natural gas transportation markets

The approval by FERC of a regulated natural gas pipeline’s market-based rate application depends upon the availability of substitute pipelines with sufficient capacity to maintain the current transport price. But how much alternate capacity is enough? Clearly, the price will not increase when alternate pipelines have unsubscribed capacity equal to the capacity of the applicant pipeline, since the applicant’s capacity is then perfectly substitutable. And indeed, FERC has approved market-based rates when this “complete-replacement” criterion has been met. However, complete-replacement is too stringent a condition and we determine precisely how much alternate capacity suffices to keep the price from rising.     

Regulatory arbitrage and the FERC rate settlement process

We demonstrate that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) regulatory procedures for natural gas pipelines, specifically its rate-refund policy, induces regulatory arbitrage that leads to economic distortions. Specifically, we demonstrate that the rate refund policy causes pipelines effectively to “extort” ratepayers through the addition of economically inefficient capital investment, akin to “gold-plating” investments. We estimate the potential magnitude of this arbitrage impact on ratepayers to be between $400 and $700 million annually. Counterintuitively, however, we demonstrate that the presence of this arbitrage opportunity leads to underinvestment in pipeline capacity, thus negating one of the principal purposes of rate regulation. We further demonstrate that FERC could easily eliminate this regulatory arbitrage by setting the refund interest rate to the pipeline’s as-filed weighted average cost of capital.     

Willingness to accept compensation for the environmental risks of oil transport on the Amazon: A choice modeling experiment

This paper looks at the question of whether subsistence level/indigenous people place a value on the preservation of ecosystems independent of direct impacts of environmental change, such as impacts on their production activities. The economics literature generally suggests that non-use values don't exist among the poor and in the informal sector of the economy. We examine this issue through a choice modeling experiment. A survey was conducted of rainforest communities who live on the banks of the Amazon River (Rio Solimões), in the vicinity of proposed oil and gas pipelines. The data were analyzed in the choice modeling framework, revealing relatively high amounts of compensation that were necessary in order to accept the potential ecosystem damages associated with oil transport, even if the people were completely compensated for direct damages such as loss of access to productive resources. These results suggest that environmental quality is important for its own sake, a result that is very different from the implicit assumption among many economists.     

第四方物流与中国油气调控中心定位研究

石油/天然气管道运输是中国石油工业发展不可或缺的组成部分,管道运输石油/天然气有着其他运输方式不可比拟的优势;但是,管输系统自身的技术经济特性,决定了较之其他运输方式,其适应外生变量变化能力弱,内生变量可控性差。鉴此,从事第三方物流的管道运营商需要在网络中运营,由此造就中国油气调控中心的产生背景。从第四方物流“是一个供应链的集成商,它对公司内部和具有互补性的服务供应商所拥有的不同资源、能力和技术进行整合和管理,提供一整套供应链解决方案”分析入手,得出了中国油气调控中心定位——第四方物流。     

OPEN ACCESS AND THE EMERGENCE OF A COMPETITIVE NATURAL GAS MARKET

Recent regulatory changes permitted natural gas pipelines to become "open access" transporters. This change in pipeline carrier status dissolved regulatory barriers to markets. This paper describes the institutions that were developed to support exchange in gas markets and observes and evaluates their emergence, evolution, and performance. The institutional and empirical evidence reveals that gas markets rapidly emerged with the dissolution of regulatory barriers. Spot gas prices converged and became highly correlated. A national market for natural gas developed within four years.     

铺设跨国输油气管道的战略思考

根据我国现有能源资源尚不能满足国民经济发展需求的国情,中央提出要充分利用国内外两种资源。其中,筹建铺设跨国输油气管道,积极引进周边国家油气资源．逐步改善我国不合理的能源结构,是实施国民经济可持续发展战略的重要举措。本文从战略高度阐明了铺设跨国输油气管道的目的意义,国外油气供应国目标的选择,以及尚需解决的几个主要问题。     

International Transport of Captured \hbox {CO}_2: Who Can Gain and How Much?

If carbon capture and storage (CCS) is to become a viable option for low-carbon power generation, its deployment will require the construction of dedicated CO₂ transport infrastructure. In a scenario of large-scale deployment of CCS in Europe by 2050, the optimal (cost-minimising) CO₂ transport network would consist of large international bulk pipelines from the main CO₂ source regions to the CO₂ sinks in hydrocarbon fields and saline aquifers, which are mostly located in the North Sea. In this paper, we use a Shapley value approach to analyse the multilateral negotiation process that would be required to develop such jointly optimised CO₂ infrastructure. First, we find that countries with excess storage capacity capture 38–45 % of the benefits of multilateral coordination, implying that the resource rent of a depleted hydrocarbon field (when used for CO₂ storage) is roughly $${\$}1$$ per barrel of original recoverable oil reserves, or $${\$}2$$ per boe (barrel of oil equivalent) of original recoverable gas reserves. This adds 25–600 % to current estimates of CO₂ storage cost. Second, countries with a strategic transit location capture 19 % of the rent in the case of national pipeline monopolies. Liberalisation of CO₂ pipeline construction at EU level could eliminate the transit rent and is shown to reduce by two-thirds the differences between countries in terms of cost per tonne of CO₂ exported. Reaching agreement on such liberalisation may be politically challenging, since the payoffs are shown to be strongly divergent across countries.     

亚洲石油大陆桥建设设想

本文提出了关于建设亚洲石油大陆桥设想的国际意义,以及我国参与建设的必要性,并构建了亚州石油大陆桥的基本框架,最后提出中国应采取的主要对策和措施.     

“西为中用·顺势利导”——生态雨水机埠 与合流制特点的老旧城区海绵改造

以常德市柏子园汇水片区为例，运用水力模型工 具，探讨在老城区现有末端生态雨水机埠情形下，通过优化设 置低影响开发(LID)设施和管网改造工程，从源头解决机埠合 流制溢流(CSO)污染的效果和可行性。根据棚户区较多、绿 地率少、土壤渗透性差、项目实施难度大等情况，进行项目方 案布置和LID措施选择；根据现状管网特征，进行近远期管网 改造方案和源头截流措施选择。采用典型年降雨数据进行连续 模拟，分析评估在老旧城区增设源头控制设施和中途管网改造 对既定末端机埠溢流水量及溢流频次的控制效果，并通过情景 方案比选，得出在现有土地使用条件下的最优海绵改造方案， 以期为类似合流制特点的区域提供参考和借鉴。     

CROSS-CONTRACT CREDITING UNDER FERC ORDER 500

In remanding Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 436, the US. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit did not require the FERC to issue a new policy on "take-or-pay" contracts between interstate pipelines and natural gas producers. The court asked only that the FERC meet the standard of "reasoned decision making." FERC Order 500, in proposing the mechanism of cross-contract crediting to reformulate take-or-pay contracts, went far beyond the court's decision.
Take-or-pay contracts are but one component of an interrelated set of long-run commitments by both pipelines and gas producers upstream and downstream. The FERC's abrogating take-or-pay contracts would reverberate beyond the immediate consequences for pipelines and producers. Implementing Order 500 would change the conditions under which gas producers explore, develop, and extract. It would influence the terms of future lease and royalty contracts with owners of mineral rights, and it would have adverse consequences for end users of gas. Evidence exists that promulgating Order 500 increased spot gas prices. Most take-or-pay problems have been resolved through voluntary renegotiation by the parties. Nullifying the remaining contracts through regulation will not accomplish the pro-competitive goals that have guided the FERC's natural gas policy during the 1980s.     

GROWTH,RENEWABLES, AND THE OPTIMAL CARBON TAX

Optimal climate policy is investigated in a Ramsey growth model of the global economy with exhaustible oil reserves, an infinitely elastic supply of renewables, stock‐dependent oil extraction costs, and convex climate damages. Four regimes can occur, depending on the initial social cost of oil being larger or smaller than that of renewables and depending on the initial oil stock being large or small. We also offer some policy simulations for the first and second regime, which illustrate that with a lower discount rate more oil is left in situ and renewables are phased in more quickly. We identify the conditions under which the optimal carbon tax rises or decreases. Subsidizing renewables (without a carbon tax) induces more oil to be left in situ and a quicker phasing in of renewables, but oil is depleted more rapidly initially. The net effect on global warming is ambiguous.     

Macroeconomic and financial effects of oil price shocks: Evidence for the euro area

The paper investigates the macroeconomic and financial effects of oil price shocks for the euro area, with a special focus on post-2009 oil price dynamics and the recent slump. The analysis is carried out episode by episode, by means of a large-scale time-varying parameter model. We find that recessionary effects are triggered by oil price hikes and, in some cases, also by oil price slumps. In this respect, the post-2009 run-up likely contributed to sluggish growth, while uncertainty and real interest rate effects are the potential channels through which the 2014 slump has depressed aggregate demand and worsened financial conditions. Also in light of the zero interest rate policy carried out by the ECB, in so far as the Quantitative Easing policy failed to generate inflationary expectations, a more expansionary fiscal policy might be required to counteract the deflationary and recessionary threat within the expected environment of soft oil prices.