Application of a method for evaluating alternative oil- and gas-leasing systems

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1982

OSTI ID:5458168

Kretz, A L

A substantial portion of oil and natural gas in the United States lies under portions of the Outer Continental Shelf owned and managed by the federal government. Under the 1978 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act amendments, the Department of Interior was required to use new bidding systems on between 20 and 60% of all tracts leased in a given sale. The proposed systems would utilize a variety of bidding variables in addition to the traditional bonus, including the royalty rate and a profit share. Fixed payments could include higher royalties, sliding-scale royalties, fixed profit shares, and bonuses. This study develops and applies a method for determining how bidders will react to some of the new systems. This evaluation assumes that the new systems succeed in generating a higher number of bids per tract offered. A game-theoretic bidding model with multiplicative strategies can be used to generate the relative bid levels achieved by the new systems relative to those of existing bonus systems with the assumption of more bidders per tract. For some types of probability distributions representing resource-value uncertainty, their parameters can be estimated with maximum likelihood methods using bid data from previous OCS sales. The main conclusion is that there is no need to exclude the use of any of the alternative systems studied in oil and gas lease sales. For most sales, they provided more total revenue to the public than the current bonus system would have at comparable levels of competition without reducing the number of tracts reaching production.

• OSTI ID: 5458168
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
020700* -- Petroleum-- Economics
Industrial
& Business Aspects
03 NATURAL GAS
030600 -- Natural Gas-- Economic
Industrial
& Business Aspects
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
294002 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Petroleum
294003 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Natural Gas
BIDS
CONTINENTAL MARGIN
CONTINENTAL SHELF
EVALUATION
GEOLOGIC DEPOSITS
LEASING
MINERAL RESOURCES
NATURAL GAS DEPOSITS
PETROLEUM DEPOSITS
RESOURCES