Topics
The course consists of five parts: (i) Introduction to petroleum markets, (ii) Oil market theories, (iii) Petroleum taxation and wealth management, (iv) Energy and the environment, and (v) Natural gas markets. Part (i) gives an overview of petroleum markets today, including resource allocation, production, trade, and the role of energy in the world economy. This part also gives the historical perspective. Part (ii) presents theories to model the oil market. We consider different market structures, such as perfect competition, monopoly, and price leadership. In part (iii), we discuss the basic principles of petroleum taxation and investigate the Norwegian petroleum taxation system and its development. This part also looks at the management of petroleum wealth. Part (iv) deals with how climate change and climate regulations might affect energy markets. We introduce some concepts from environmental economics, look at carbon pricing, and we consider transportation markets, such as how recent fuel-efficiency and emissions reductions policies affect energy use in the transportation sector. Finally, part (v) looks at the natural gas market. In this part, we focus on ways in which natural gas differs from oil, and how these differences affect their respective markets.