Synergy and Emergence in Energy Policy Design

摘要

Effective energy policies should address the needs of all interested stakeholders. We used computer modeling to describe the interactions between energy production and economics. Policy solutions were based on regret analysis. Model results were generated for many possible futures to deal with uncertainties in future oil prices, producible oil reserves and maximum well rates, which were identified as the primary drivers of future revenues for both the state and producer in our model. We investigated the impacts of various tax and royalty policies (levers) individually as well as collectively. The results clearly define the limits of possible policies as well as those that might impact all stakeholders fairly. It was also clear that the best energy policy could not be predicted from the best solutions for each tax and royalty policy individually. Our modeling approach can used to meet the needs of both the state and producer working together to find solutions that benefit all. It can also measure the relative benefits of existing energy policies and find ways to improve them. This technique encourages the inclusion of many factors that are not normally studied in traditional approaches where production, economics and policy levers are treated separately. Our goal is to explore ways to improve the policymaker’s ability to meet the needs of all stakeholders. Our work shows that (1) even simple models can create unexpected policy results; (2) model synergy can have a great impact on results, and (3) regret analysis techniques can be very effective for defining policies. Except for our previous work, this type of policy exploration has not been reported in the petroleum literature.