Karanfil, Fatih

Energy Transition in Oil-Dependent Economies: Public Discount Rates for Investment Project Evaluation

The selection of welfare-enhancing projects necessitates the determination of the present value of cash flows from a public policy perspective. For an oil-exporting economy, the domestic energy transition often implies displacing oil from domestic consumption. Economic dependence on oil affects the public discount rate for oil-related cash flows in two opposite ways. On the one hand, it renders the economy more volatile, lowering the risk-free discount rate; on the other hand, it increases the correlation between consumption and the oil price, resulting in a higher risk premium. To study these opposite effects, we first derive the public discount rate for an oil-related investment project. Our framework considers economic uncertainty and an oil price-related risk premium, and it makes it possible to value oil at its opportunity cost. We illustrate our methodology using data from a panel of 26 oil-exporting countries. The results indicate that a risk-free discount rate of 3.1% is appropriate for our panel. However, to discount oil-related cash flows, a risk premium of 1.4% needs to be added to the risk-free rate, yielding a risk-adjusted real discount rate of 4.5%. We find significant disparities between country-specific public discount rates. Additionally, for each country, we assess the present value of reducing domestic oil consumption by a barrel per day from 2023 to 2040, decomposing the different effects. Oil-exporting countries can use our estimates to make investment or policy decisions.

5th June 2024

Fiscal Policy in Oil and Gas-Exporting Economies: Good Times, Bad Times and Ugly Times

Revenues from oil and gas exports represent an important source of government budgets in some emerging countries. At the same time, these revenues fluctuate considerably due to changing global economic conditions and energy prices. Economic theory prescribes that governments should try to stabilize their economies by saving windfall oil and gas revenues and spending them in periods of price downturns. However, oil- and gas-exporting countries often run procyclical policies, that is, they increase spending during windfall periods and reduce it in the event of a shortfall, which may result in severe recessions. Understanding what drives the response of fiscal policy to oil and gas revenue shocks is important as it helps to explain what makes the economies of commodity exporters more or less vulnerable to commodity price shocks, and how they can adjust to price volatility and to the long-term energy transition.

4th July 2023

The Energy Transition and Export Diversification in Oil-Dependent Countries: The Role of Structural Factors

The energy transition toward decarbonization is expected to impact producers of fossil fuels. However, oil-exporting countries are currently key players in the modern economy. Thus, the energy transition will not be successful if state revenues in these countries are not stably maintained. These countries can protect themselves against revenue volatility and mitigate carbon risk by diversifying their economies. However, export diversification appears to be particularly challenging for many oil-producing countries.

11th May 2023

Cooperate or Compete? Insights from Simulating a Global Oil Market with No Residual Supplier

Structural changes in the global oil sector are disrupting conventional market dynamics and the roles played by competing and cooperating producers. Industry players are adjusting to the shale (or ‘tight’) oil revolution and the possibility of plateauing or peaking global oil demand. In particular, OPEC and Saudi Arabia, its top producer, are reshaping the organization’s role as the primary residual supplier to the world oil market. In recent years, OPEC has invited other major exporters, including Russia, to cooperate under the OPEC+ production agreement in an effort to stabilize prices.

6th August 2020

The Opportunity Cost of Domestic Oil Consumption for an Oil Exporter: Illustration for Saudi Arabia

When appraising investment projects from a public perspective, a barrel of oil displaced from or added to domestic consumption has to be valued at its opportunity cost. This paper develops a partial-equilibrium framework to assess the opportunity cost of domestic oil consumption for an oil-exporting country. The framework takes into account that (i) the usual ‘small economy’ assumption does not necessarily hold, (ii) the domestic oil price can be set either at a fixed level or as a function of the international price, and (iii) oil production, level of exports, or domestic consumption can be constrained. We derive the opportunity cost for each case considered and a formula quantifying the net welfare gains from reforming the domestic oil price

1st March 2020

Fiscal Policy for Stability in Oil-Exporting Countries: From the Old Problems to the Challenges of COVID-19

Since the Great Recession of 2008, oil-exporting countries have had to adjust their fiscal policies to respond to larger oil price variations and increased unpredictability. This commentary provides insights into the relationship between oil prices and fiscal policies in emerging and developing (ED) oil-exporting countries. It also gives an overview of how fiscal rules and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) can contribute to mitigating fluctuations in oil revenues and stabilizing economies. Last, it discusses the fiscal responses of oil-exporting countries to the COVID-19 crisis.

25th April 2021

Simulating a Global Oil Market With No Residual Supplier

Motivation and objective of the study What if OPEC decided to abandon organizing residual production collectively, transitioning the world permanently to a competitive oil market? This commentary is based on a forthcoming KAPSARC paper, “Cooperate or Compete? Insights from Simulating a Global Oil Market with No Residual Supplier” (Rioux et al. 2020). It constructs scenarios in which OPEC members, or OPEC members other than Saudi Arabia, start behaving as competitive price takers in 2020 and stop participating as part of a collective residual oil supplier. This analysis employs a standard economic equilibrium model to simulate the transition to a purely competitive world oil market from 2020 to 2030.

16th July 2020