Introducing the Theoretical Basis of Oil Vulnerability Index for Oil Exporting Countries (the Case of Iran)

This paper introduces the theoretical foundations of oil vulnerability index for oil exporting countries. In order to identify this index, several indicators related to both economic risk and demand risk were presented. This index was calculated for Iranian economy from 1990 to 2015. Regarding to the economic risk, seven different channels based on the extension of literature discussing the Dutch disease were introduced. These channels include income, government revenue, spending, the current account, exchange rate, technology and government spending volatility channels. Regarding to the demand risk, the focus was on two main components: oil market concentration risk (OMCR) and political risk. For calculation the demand risk, in the first step, the OMCR was calculated based on the share of Iran's oil-importing countries from Iran’s oil export. Then depending on the stability of the bilateral political relations, the dependence of Iran’s oil importers on oil import from Iran and their ability to meet their needs from other countries, the political risk indicator was calculated. Finally, by adjusting OMCR with political risk, geopolitical OMCR was calculated. The results show that between 2002 and 2004, with the diversification of export routes of Iran's oil, creation of oil fund reserves, diversification of foreign exchange source income, etc., OVI was decreased significantly. After 2010, with the decrease in the diversity of oil exports routes, with the imposition of sanctions and with limiting the oil export to certain countries, OVI became the worst.