值得高度关注的国际大石油战略新动向

随着中国对外能源依存度不断提高,在中美全方位综合国力竞争的同时,中国同美国围绕能源资源、能源通道、能源市场、能源战略的博弈将日趋激烈。面对复杂形势,中国需要考虑如何提高国家能量安全度?如何加快加大煤化工产业发展?如何加大节能减排力度?如何有效介入国际油气资源勘探?     

综合信息

[石化]发改委高官：优先发展水电是必须坚持的能源方针。目前中国的能源生产和消费以煤炭为主，煤炭在中国一次能源消费中的比重高达2／3以上，这种过度依赖煤炭的能源消费结构，已造成了严重的环境问题，是不可持续的能源消费方式。中国人均化石能源资源较少，特别是探明的油气资源难以满足日益增长的需求。相对来讲，水力资源具有较大优势。据测算，水力资源占中国常规能源资源剩余可采储量的40％左右，     

新能源：不再“纸上谈兵”

随着全球以石油和煤炭为代表的常规能源逐步走向枯竭,国际环保主义呼声的日渐高涨,在以风能、太阳能、核能、生物质能等清洁能源和可再生能源为代表的新能源领域抢占先机成为全球能源界的共识。我国拥有十分巨大的新能源产业资源,近年来,许多国际投资机构对我国的新能源产业给予前所未有的关注。对于我国新能源产业来说,在承载着太多的希望的同时,也肩负着深重的责任。     

新形势下我国能源发展面临的挑战和对策

在国际政治经济环境发生急剧变化、国内能源发展存在突出问题的新形势下,我国能源安全面临着严峻的挑战。我们必须贯彻落实党的十八大精神,统筹国内和国际两个大局,着力从增强能源保障内生动力、提高能源利用效率、建设能源战略储备体系、完善能源金融体系、加强国际能源合作、实施海洋强国战略等方面,思考我国能源发展战略。     

低碳经济背景下的中国能源结构优化问题研究

随着经济持续快速发展和低碳经济的要求,我国面临着能源结构不尽合理,能源利用效率低下,能源与资源、环境和社会发展的矛盾日益突出等问题,因此,切实从我国的国情和能源实际情况出发,合理控制能源消费总量,推进能源生产和利用方式的变革,优化能源产业结构,加大能源技术创新力度,大力发展新能源策略,优化能源结构是促进我国经济持续快速发展和转变经济增长方式的必然选择.     

亚行将亚洲地区清洁能源年度投资增至20亿美元

亚行将大幅度增加清洁能源投资，从以前的每年10亿美元增加到每年20亿美元，以便加快该地区的低碳发展，减少温室气体排放。亚行行长黑田东彦（Haruhiko Kuroda）在亚行总部举行的亚太地区气候变化高层对话上宣布了这一消息。黑田先生表示，“虽然每年20亿美元是一笔巨额资金承诺，但这仅代表了本地区清洁能源领域融资需求的一小部分投入。我们希望这笔投资能够带动私营部门、碳市场及其他领域为此提供更多的资源”。     

越南经济动荡引起全球关注

2008年以来，越南多项经济指标亮起红灯。因原油和粮食价格的上涨，5月份越南按年率计算的通胀率已飙升至25．2％的水平，达13年来最高。1-5月，由于国际能源、建材和化肥价格上涨，越南贸易赤字达到144亿美元。另据世界银行测算，越南2007年的外债规模将达到240亿美元，占GDP的30．2％，而越南的外汇储备仅为185亿美元，大大低于越南的外债总额。越南政府财政赤字近年也持续扩大，长时间维持在约占GDP5％的危险水平。     

绿色金融支持能源转型的国际经验及启示

在能源碳排放量持续攀升、发达国家能源转型进展加快、国家对能源安全重视度提高的背景下,中国加快能源转型,催生大量的投融资需求,绿色金融成为支持能源转型的利器。国际银行业在减排战略、融资约束、产品创新、风险管理、国际合作等方面推动化石能源低碳转型、非化石能源规模化发展,中国银行业尚未有针对能源转型的具体措施,产品和服务相对单一,对能源结构改善的效果有待提升。未来,中国银行业要在本国国情的基础上对支持能源转型提出更加有针对性的方案,设定能源领域碳减排目标、稳妥有序调整投融资结构、构建多元化绿色金融产品服务链、完善能源转型风险防控体系、加强能源领域的国际合作,进一步提升金融服务能力。     

油价攀升100美元不是顶

近年来，世界能源体系已近失常。‘需求持续上升推动油价达到历史新高．使供应变得不再可靠。伊朗、俄罗斯和委内瑞拉等石油输出国．正在用它们的石油资金．削弱西方的安全和利益。这些麻烦的背后是失常的能源政治。因此，国际油价在一次又一次地越过70美元大关后，在很短的时间内冲击100美元未必就是最终的巅峰。在5月27日的科威特能源研讨会上，能源专家们惊呼：如果某个主要石油出口国的原油供应中断，保守估计，油价会升至每桶105美元。     

能源发展“十二五”规划解读

国务院办公厅于23日发布了《能源发展“十二五”规划》。规划称,要加强国内资源勘探开发;推进能源高效清洁转化;推动能源供应方式变革;加快能源储运设施建设;实施能源民生工程;控制能源消费总量;深化能源体制机制改革;提升能源科技和装备水平;深化能源国际合作。     

How Have the World's Poorest Fared since the Early 1980s?

A new assessment is made of the developing world's progressagainst poverty. By the frugal $1 a day standard there were1.1 billion poor people in 2001—almost 400 million fewerthan 20 years earlier. During that period the number of poorpeople declined by more than 400 million in China, though halfthe decline was in the early 1980s and the number outside Chinarose slightly. At the same time the number of people in theworld living on less than $2 a day rose, so that there has beena marked bunching up of people living between $1 and $2 a day.Sub-Saharan Africa has become the region with the highest incidenceof extreme poverty and the greatest depth of poverty. If thesetrends continue, the 1990 aggregate $1 a day poverty rate willbe halved by 2015, meeting the Millennium Development Goal,though only East and South Asia will reach this goal.      

Market Valuation of Tax-Timing Options: Evidence from Capital Gains Distributions

We examine a distribution that is taxed as a capital gain rather than as a dividend. Since the distribution induces a realized capital gain while the price change is an unrealized gain, ex‐day return behavior provides evidence of the value of tax‐timing capital gains. We show that investors are compensated 7¢ in unrealized gains for each dollar of realized capital gains, that is, $1 of realized capital gains is equivalent to 93¢ of unrealized gains. An investor with a tax rate on realized gains of 15% has an effective tax rate on unrealized capital gains of 8.6%.     

The ecological footprint of New Zealand as a step towards sustainability

Three studies have derived ecological footprints for New Zealand. Two were done in NZ and are based on land area only. The third is part of an international study which includes marine resources. Absolute comparisons in physical parameters are difficult as they do not all have the same baseline. Relative comparisons, as a proportion of carrying capacity exclusive of marine resources, are comparable, viz. 86, 60 and 70%. Precaution and the maintenance of biodiversity imply that we should live well within our carrying capacity. New Zealand therefore could be considered as already over populated at our present life style and relative to the global carrying capacity. The international study of 52 nations (80% of the world's population) derives an average global footprint (2.8 ha/cap), inclusive of marine resources, that is greater than the global ecological capacity (2.1 ha/cap). NZ has a very large footprint at 7.6 ha/cap whilst being the most bounteous of all with an ecological capacity of 20.4 ha/cap. However the marine ecological capacity for NZ is proportionately very large (50% of our total capacity) but uncertain and so should be disregarded. Exclusive of the marine component, the NZ footprint and capacity are 7.4 and 10.5 ha/cap respectively—the 70% reported above. A significant minority in New Zealand would not feel they are enjoying the bounty expressed by these figures. There are several reasons—we undervalue nature's wealth; quantitative growth is unsustainable; we are losing control of our resources; our economic system is flawed. Even so, achieving greater equity within NZ and between nations within the global capacity will not in itself lead to sustainability—to biophysical sustainability perhaps, but that is only survival. Sustainability pertains to the interior, subjective dimensions in life which have no location and are not quantifiable but which provide purpose and meaning in life. Indeed we may even be unable to achieve biophysical sustainability without engaging in the evolution of human consciousness at a collective level.     

Income shifting and U.S. international trade in goods statistics

Intrafirm trade represents greater than one-third of total U.S. international trade in goods. Since these are not arm’s-length transactions, trade policymakers have voiced concerns that income shifting may distort international trade in goods statistics through the manipulation of transfer prices. Using country-level data on intrafirm exports and imports, we estimate a path analysis that simultaneously tests how and to what extent tax-motivated transfer pricing and real investment decisions affect intrafirm trade in goods statistics. Contrary to speculation, we do not find an economically significant relation between transfer pricing and intrafirm trade in goods statistics. In contrast, we find that tax-motivated location decisions create a 21 (20) percent or $819.7 ($927.1) million difference in mean intrafirm exports (imports) between the U.S. and a low- and high-tax country. This study provides trade policymakers with relevant information about the extent to which real investment decisions and accounting manipulations affect intrafirm trade in goods statistics and contributes to the international trade and income shifting literatures.     

倪召兴的资本野心

真正"草根"出身的倪召兴,拿着1万元开始创业,20年后的今天已经成为在房地产和石油等领域、国内外叱咤风云的人物,连年跻身福布斯富豪之列。他的公司在加拿大威里斯顿盆地有400平方公里的油田,上百口油井;他是大股东的美国上市公司在美国墨西哥湾油田拥有600多平方公里的油田,600多口油井;他的公司在美国纽约大金融家居住区拥有600亩的贝德福德山庄地块;他的公司在香港葵涌风景迷人的贝澳海湾已经购得地块,将在那建起公司的海外总部大楼……倪召兴的下一步计划是逐步在华尔街分别打造地产、能源和矿产私募基金,未来进而成为在上述三大领域均有所作为,在全球控股拥有百幢顶尖写字楼、干吨黄金储量、日产万桶石油的综合性控股集团。这就是倪召兴策划已久的、惊人庞大的资本野心。     

The Real Reasons Enron Failed

Why did Enron fail? Was it the criminality of key corporate executives, and their resort to deceptive bookkeeping and off‐balance sheet financing, as the popular accounts suggest? This article argues that the popular accounts may confuse causes and consequences and suggests that the seeds of Enron's demise were sown years before criminal behavior took root. The more fundamental causes appear to have been matters of organizational design—in particular, bonus plans that paid managers to increase reported earnings; the use of mark‐to‐market accounting, with the blessing of the SEC, in generating those earnings; and CEO Skilling's decision to permit CFO Fastow to make finance a “profit center”—all of which happened five to ten years before Enron's bankruptcy filing. In desperate attempts to keep up with aggressive earnings targets, Enron's managers became so indiscriminate in committing the firm's capital that, in 1999, the international energy division presented Skilling with a plan that contemplated earning just $100 million in profit on a capital base of $7 billion. With that kind of performance—which amounts to a loss of several hundred million in terms of economic profits—the CFO faced considerable pressure to use deceptive tactics to put off the day of reckoning. The real Enron story may thus be more than the morality play told in press accounts. A major part of the blame must be assigned to the design of the company's performance measures and internal controls.     

Who is Not Poor? Dreaming of a World Truly Free of Poverty

When the World Bank dreams of "a world free of poverty," whatshould it be dreaming? In measuring global income or consumptionexpenditure poverty, the World Bank has widely adopted the $1a day standard as a lower bound. Because this standard is basedon poverty lines in the poorest countries, anyone with incomeor expenditures below this line will truly be poor. But thereis no consensus standard for the upper bound of the global povertyline: above what level of income or expenditures is someonetruly not poor? This article proposes that the World Bank computeits lower and upper bounds in a methodologically equivalentway, using the poverty lines of the poorest countries for thelower bound and the poverty lines of the richest countries forthe upper bound. The resulting upper bound global poverty linewould be 10 times higher than the current lower bound and atleast 5 times higher than the currently used alternative lowerbound of $2 a day. And in tracking progress toward a world freeof poverty, the World Bank should compute measures of globalpoverty using a variety of weights on the depth and intensityof poverty for a range of poverty lines between the global lowerand upper bounds. For instance, rather than trying to artificiallyforce the global population of 6.2 billion (a billion is 1,000million) into just two categories "poor" and "not poor," withthe new range of poverty lines the estimates would be that 1.3billion people are "destitute" (below $1 a day), another 1.6billion are in "extreme poverty" (above $1 a day but below $2dollar a day), and another 2.5 billion are in "global poverty"(above extreme poverty but below the upper bound poverty line).      

Optimal dividend policies for a class of growth-restricted diffusion processes under transaction costs and solvency constraints

In this paper, we consider a company whose surplus follows a rather general diffusion process and whose objective is to maximize expected discounted dividend payments. With each dividend payment, there are transaction costs and taxes, and it is shown in Paulsen (Adv. Appl. Probab. 39:669?C689, 2007) that under some reasonable assumptions, optimality is achieved by using a lump sum dividend barrier strategy, i.e., there is an upper barrier $\bar{u}^{*}$ and a lower barrier $\underline{u}^{*}$ so that whenever the surplus reaches $\bar{u}^{*}$ , it is reduced to $\underline{u}^{*}$ through a dividend payment. However, these optimal barriers may be unacceptably low from a solvency point of view. It is argued that, in that case, one should still look for a barrier strategy, but with barriers that satisfy a given constraint. We propose a solvency constraint similar to that in Paulsen (Finance Stoch. 4:457?C474, 2003); whenever dividends are paid out, the probability of ruin within a fixed time T and with the same strategy in the future should not exceed a predetermined level ??. It is shown how optimality can be achieved under this constraint, and numerical examples are given.     

Information Transfers across Same–Sector Funds When Closed–End Funds Issue Equity

This study examines the reaction of non–issuing, same–sector funds when a closed–end fund announces a seasoned equity offering. The non–issuing, same–sector funds have a significant, negative announcement–day abnormal return. The abnormal returns for U.S. debt funds are less negative than U.S. equity and international debt funds. The abnormal returns for international debt funds are more negative than international equity funds. Announcement–day abnormal returns are directly related to the announcement–day abnormal return of the issuing fund and the premium/discount of the issuing fund. Announcement–day abnormal returns are inversely related to the premium/discount of the non–issuing, same–sector funds.