پژوهشنامه اقتصاد انرژی ایران
پیاپی 33 (زمستان 1398)

Oil represents a big share in Iran’s economy; thus, it is a sensitive issue for the public in Iran, and oil disputes are a public concern and provoke political debate in Iran. This article analyses the importance of arbitration as an oil dispute resolution mechanism, then, it studies the possibility of taking cases to it under international and Iranian law. To this aim, it employs a comparative legal approach to highlight factors in arbitration’s popularity among other Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms. Then, the legitimacy of taking cases to arbitration is investigated from domestic and international law perspectives. Finally, implications of the Iranian law on the performance of the National Iranian Oil Company in the arbitration proceedings are discussed and a recommendation to alter conditions of going to arbitration is presented for lawmakers.

This study has decomposed affecting factors on energy consumption in the agriculture sector (MBOE) by using Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) to three structural effects, activity effects, and energy intensity effects during 2006-2014. Also, it's investigated the relationship between GDP growth and energy consumption of the agriculture sector by combining Mean Logarithmic Divisia Index with the decoupling index. The results show that energy consumption of the agriculture sector has increased during that period. Activity effect and structural effect respectively, have the most share in explaining the changes in energy consumption among the mentioned effects, and the intensity effect has a smaller role in explaining the changes in energy consumption. Additionally, the results of applying the decoupling index indicated that the agriculture sector experienced three conditions, including strong negative decoupling, weak decoupling, and expansive negative decoupling during the period of study. In the agriculture sector, after activity effect, i.e., the change of total energy consumption of each sector due to increase of production, the structural effect, i.e., utilize of the energy-intensive industries, not only has more explanatory power than efficient use of energy in the changes in energy consumption but also has the most share in the trend of changes in GDP and changes in energy consumption of aforementioned sector. But the share of effective energy consumption expressed in terms of the intensity effect is less. This conclusion suggests that the use of energy-intensive industries has a greater role in total energy consumption changes and decoupling index changes than an inefficient use of energy.

Lack of financial resources is a common dilemma in various types of projects which can result in project delays and, in some cases, can threaten project feasibility. One of the remedies for these situations is early production where a part of the project will be completed and commissioned. In this paper, a development, production, and transmission optimization model for oil and gas fields is extended to consider early production cash flows. A case study is analyzed which showed sooner completion of projects and also a significant improvement in the total net present value of considered projects. This research is applied, experimental, field, and long-term. A linear mathematical model is developed which is solved in GAMS software using the CPLEX algorithm.

In the present study, the approach of a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium was used in order to simulate the economic and welfare effects of the allocation of oil revenues in the Iranian economy. Accordingly, changes in the production index of different economic sectors, changes in consumption and price levels in the form of 4 scenarios of different combinations of depositing oil revenues to the National Development Fund of Iran, and using the social accounting matrix (SAM) related to the year 2011 were considered. The results showed that by using different scenarios of oil revenue allocation, the highest growth of production and consumption of the studied sectors compared to the basic scenario of the fourth scenario (save 20% of oil revenues in the country's foreign exchange fund and invest 30% of the fund's resources in the industry) will be. Meanwhile, the highest rate of price reduction in the production sector is related to the fact that 20% of oil revenues are saved in the country's foreign exchange fund and no amount has been invested in the economic sectors. In fact, the increase in production and boom is due to the increase in investment in the industrial sector of inflation and will lead to the growth of prices of manufactured products. Therefore, by allocating the fund's resources in the industrial sector, the goal of economic growth and increasing household welfare will be achieved. In fact, due to the strong links between the industrial sector and other sectors, including agriculture and services, by investing to improve the productivity of the industrial sector, all economic sectors have benefited from this issue and by increasing production while growing demand for investment and increasing household consumption will bring greater welfare to consumers.

Energy intensity is an important indicator of energy consumption assessment and its reduction is one of the goals of policymakers and planners in countries. Developing effective policies to reduce energy intensity requires a thorough study of the factors that affect it. In this study, the effect of foreign direct investment on energy intensity convergence by Iranian provinces using spatial econometric technique and panel data of 30 provinces of the country from 2010 to 2015 was studied. After confirming the spatial dependence by Moran and Panel (robust) LM and LM tests, the absolute and conditional convergence of "β" has been tested. According to the results, the absolute convergence of energy intensity in the provinces of Iran was confirmed. This means that the rate of decrease in energy intensity in provinces with higher energy intensity is higher than the rate of decrease in energy intensity in provinces with lower energy intensity. To investigate the conditional convergence, the foreign direct investment variable was added to the model. The results indicate a conditional convergence of energy intensity in the provinces of Iran, as well as a decrease in energy intensity with an increase in foreign direct investment. In fact, foreign direct investment with the introduction of new production technology increases the efficiency of the use of production inputs such as energy, and this leads to the convergence of energy intensity among the provinces of Iran. The effects of the spillovers of foreign direct investment on the convergence of negative and meaningless energy intensity can be attributed to the low level of foreign direct investment attraction and its non-distribution at the provincial level. In general, the increase in foreign direct investment in a particular province causes the convergence of energy intensity and its spillovers effect potentially causes the convergence of energy intensity in the provinces of the country.

Today, in most countries, especially developing countries, economic growth is at the heart of planning. Since the place of economic activity is the environment, unfortunately, growth has had unfortunate consequences for the human environment. The main objective of this study is to measure the reduction of environmental pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions under policy-making scenarios compared to the reference scenario. The research method in this study is using the scenario analysis method based on Long Term Alternatives Planning Model (LEAP). The research findings show that by designing demand-side and supply-side management scenarios, meaning that replacing renewable energies and electricity in place of fossil fuels (crude oil and natural gas), reducing the amount of environmental pollutant emissions for the year 1420 (year horizon) 2014 (Year Zero Planning) is 123.5 million tonnes.