Alternatives to local content requirements in resource-rich countries

This paper discusses whether and to what extent resource-rich developing countries should introduce local content policies, i.e. requirements to include local inputs in petroleum extraction activities of multinational corporations. We argue that local content needs to be seen as a public expenditure question, since local content requirements increase multinational costs, and hence reduce the taxes which can be extracted from these companies. This implies that there are opportunity costs in imposing local content requirements, since the forgone taxes can be used in others ways which could potentially do more to improve development prospects. Moreover, past experiences of resource-rich developing countries suggest that local content policies can exacerbate key problems of patronage and rent-seeking which resource rents generate, increasing the chance that the resource wealth will prevent rather than help development. These arguments suggest that an optimal local content policy in the context of flawed institutions is a more limited one than those typically pursued by developing countries with recently discovered petroleum reserves. Using qualitative data from Tanzania, a country with recent discoveries of substantial natural gas deposits, we analyze why local content tends to become such a central issue in debates and policy processes, despite its potentially problematic aspects.     

Crude oil price forecasting based on internet concern using an extreme learning machine

The growing internet concern (IC) over the crude oil market and related events influences market trading, thus creating further instability within the oil market itself. We propose a modeling framework for analyzing the effects of IC on the oil market and for predicting the price volatility of crude oil’s futures market. This novel approach decomposes the original time series into intrinsic modes at different time scales using bivariate empirical mode decomposition (BEMD). The relationship between the oil price volatility and IC at an individual frequency is investigated. By utilizing decomposed intrinsic modes as specified characteristics, we also construct extreme learning machine (ELM) models with variant forecasting schemes. The experimental results illustrate that ELM models that incorporate intrinsic modes and IC outperform the baseline ELM and other benchmarks at distinct horizons. Having the power to improve the accuracy of baseline models, internet searching is a practical way of quantifying investor attention, which can help to predict short-run price fluctuations in the oil market.     

餐饮废油的回收利用研究进展

综述了餐饮废油在制备生物柴油、化工原料、饲料、混凝土制品脱模剂等领域中的应用及研究进展．并对其发展前景进行了展望。     

一种新型的微颗粒示踪剂及其在致密油藏中的应用

目前应用于油气田的示踪剂为水溶性示踪剂或者是气体示踪剂.经过多年的研究,开发了一种新类型的微颗粒固体示踪剂,并在长庆油田致密油藏中成功施工,标志着从实验成功走向了矿场.固体示踪剂在油气田开发中的应用前景广阔,尤其对致密油藏井间裂缝开度的定量描述具有指导意义.     

人民币汇率对国际原油定价的影响和机制

本文基于动态条件相关混频数据抽样模型,研究人民币汇率收益率与国际原油收益率的相关性.结果表明:人民币收益率与国际原油收益率存在一定程度负相关关系,但负相关程度不高;中国原油进口量和制造业采购经理指数上升能提升人民币和原油收益率的负相关程度,面额效应的作用机制存在;国际期货市场投机活跃程度增强能提升人民币和原油收益率的负...     

粮食能源化趋势的市场效应及其应对

近年来,石油短缺、油价昂贵导致世界生物能源产业,如燃料乙醇产业迅猛扩张。而乙醇产量的迅猛增长,消耗了大量粮食类农产品(特别是玉米),从而造成全球性的"粮食能源化"问题。为应对能源危机和粮食危机的同时出现,我国应调整燃料乙醇的原料结构,采用非口粮类能源作物、庄稼废料、城市垃圾等,实现能源与粮食的双丰收,推动经济社会的可持续发展。     

The Relationship Between Energy Commodity Prices and Electricity and Market Index Performances: Evidence from an Emerging Market

We investigate the effect of energy commodity price movements on market and electricity index returns in Turkey for the periods before, during, and after the year 2008. Although the Turkish economy is highly reliant on oil, we find that oil price does not lead either electricity or market indexes. This might be attributable to sluggish integration of financial markets in Turkey compared to developed markets. Natural gas price leads electricity index in the pre-2008 period. Its significance is reduced following the decline in natural gas usage in electricity production. This suggests that commodity dependence may be driving the link between commodity and asset prices in related sectors.     

GDP growth in Russia: different capital stock series and the terms of trade

There are different academic assessments of the principal forces behind Russia’s GDP growth. Studies that reconstruct capital stocks using gross fixed capital formation and the perpetual inventory method find that total factor productivity growth has been paramount to GDP growth. On the other hand, capital services datasets that have recently been made available find that capital developments have been instrumental in driving economic growth. We reconstruct a capital stock series for Russia for 1995–2013 and compare the results to two capital services time series using the Solow growth model. We also take into account terms of trade developments that have lent strong support to Russia’s economy. The terms of trade is shown to have been an important factor behind the development of gross fixed capital formation and thus GDP growth.     

Shifting patterns of oil palm driven deforestation in Indonesia and implications for zero-deforestation commitments

Oil palm plantations in Indonesia have been linked to substantial deforestation in the 1990s and 2000s, though recent studies suggest that new plantations are increasingly developed on non-forest land. Without nationwide data to establish recent baseline trends, the impact of commitments to eliminate deforestation from palm oil supply chains could therefore be overestimated. We examine the area and proportion of plantations replacing forests across Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua up to 2015, and map biophysically suitable areas for future deforestation-free expansion. We created new maps of oil palm plantations for the years 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015, and examined land cover replaced in each period. Nationwide, oil palm plantation expansion occurred at an average rate of 450,000 ha yr⁻¹, and resulted in an average of 117,000 ha yr⁻¹ of deforestation, during 1995–2015. Our analysis of the most recent five-year period (2010–2015) shows that the rate of deforestation due to new plantations has remained relatively stable since 2005, despite large increases in the extent of plantations. As a result, the proportion of plantations replacing forests decreased from 54% during 1995–2000, to 18% during 2010–2015. In addition, we estimate there are 30.2 million hectares of non-forest land nationwide which meet biophysical suitability criteria for oil palm cultivation. Our findings suggest that recent zero-deforestation commitments may not have a large impact on deforestation in Sumatra, where plantations have increasingly expanded onto non-forest land over the past twenty years, and which hosts large potentially suitable areas for future deforestation-free expansion. On the other hand, these pledges could have more influence in Kalimantan, where oil palm driven deforestation increased over our study period, and in Papua, a new frontier of expansion with substantial remaining forest cover.     

Governing the Palm-Oil Sector through Finance: The Changing Roles of the Indonesian State

By analysing the different roles of the Indonesian state in arranging finance schemes for palm-oil development since 1945, this article aims to answer two questions: What are these roles? And to what extent have they prioritised or balanced economic growth, social equity, and environmental protection? We conclude that the state has never been absent from the palm-oil industry but has had different and changing financing roles that are historically contingent and shaped by the evolving economic and political landscape. Furthermore, these roles reflect Indonesia’s priorities of achieving economic growth through palm-oil development, furthering social equity, and, recently, promoting environmental sustainability.