THE INTERNATIONAL CASES CONCERNING JOINT DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENTS (The Case of Saadia Arabia- Bahrain, Japan-South Korea, Thailand-Malaysia)

This article is dedicated to analysing the joint development agreements resolving or temporarily suspending maritime boundary disputes cases between Japan-South Korea, Saadia Arabia-Bahrain, and Thailand-Malaysia. Regardless of whether any delimitation line exists or not, international law allows the parties to agree on delimitation by consulting on the most appropriate conditions or jointly operate on the disputed zone, field or maritime border. If the cross-border dispute on hydrocarbon resources exists, the conclusion of a unitization agreement is not ruled out by the international practice as much. This article identifies the features of the joint development agreements, divides them into the three models recognized internationally, analyzes the main characteristics of each model of the joint development agreements through historical important precedents. Furthermore, the research lets daylight into the essential statements that regulate the fiscal regime, share proportion issues, the sovereign right, and the right to use subsoil and the seabed, within the agreements. Key words: Maritime boundary disputes, joint development agreements, unitization agreements, delimitation, joint development zone, international cases, demarcation of the continental shelf, seabed, disputes on petroleum reservoir, oil fields, production share agreements

An Innovative and Transparent Negotiation Mechanism for the Petroleum Contracts to Develop Marginal Oil Fields

This study is to propose a transparent mechanism among host governments and international oil companies (or IOCs) so an amicable "win-win" situation can be achieved on the negotiation of the petroleum contracts for the development of marginal fields. Marginal field has various definitions. It can be a field with recoverable reserve not exceeding 30 million barrels of oil or 500 billion standard cubic feet of natural gas (Abdul Razak 2011, Malaysian Petroleum Income Tax Act 1967). It also can be a field, somehow "stranded", needs an oil price of US$60/bbl to be commercial (Aziz 2019). Or as simpe as it can be, a marginal field in Nigeria is any field being left unattended for more than ten years from the date of discovery (Auwalu 2020). In this paper, the author recommends that a marginal field be difined as any undeveloped field with a zero present value at 10% discount rate (or PV10 Value = 0) based on the average commodity price of previous 12 months’ first-day-of-the-month prices. This definition is conformable to the SEC pricing guidelines for publicly traded IOCs in the U.S.A. (Scheig n.d.). Host governments endeavor to bring foreign fund and technology to develop their hydrocarbon resources effectively for the benefit of national welfare. IOCs are eager to expand into other promising areas for more hydrocarbon reserves in order to strengthen the balance sheets. A well-designed petroleum fiscal regime can thus achieve the balance between host governments and IOCs (Tordo 2007).

Fiscal Regimes and Digital Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper we investigate how the fiscal authorities, through tax policies or fiscal incentives, can play an important role in supporting digitalisation of the economy (digital transformation) to exploit its opportunities. Our approach is to track the influence of these policies indirectly through relevant determinants of internet adoption (connectivity and user enablers). Hence, we first establish empirically the influence of these enablers on internet use by estimating a reduced form equation of determinants of internet adoption (both demand- and supply-side factors). Then we assess the influence of a country’s fiscal policy stance on some of these enablers or determinants (direction and extent) throughout the internet value chain. Using these transmission mechanisms, we estimate the influence of the fiscal regime on digitalisation. We draw on our own empirical analysis and other relevant studies to support our recommendations to the fiscal authorities. Our findings emphasise the importance of trade-offs between short-term revenue objectives and the longer-term opportunity costs of higher revenue, enabled by the large positive externality effects of the sector, generating higher social returns than those accruing privately.

Redistribution and the Monetary-Fiscal Policy Mix

We show that the effectiveness of redistribution policy in stimulating the economy and improving welfare is directly tied to how much inflation it generates, which in turn hinges on monetary-fiscal adjustments that ultimately finance the transfers. We compare two distinct types of monetary-fiscal adjustments: In the monetary regime, the government eventually raises taxes to finance transfers, while in the fiscal regime, inflation rises, effectively imposing inflation taxes on public debt holders. We show analytically in a simple model how the fiscal regime generates larger and more persistent inflation than the monetary regime. In a quantitative application, we use a two-sector, two-agent New Keynesian model, situate the model economy in a COVID-19 recession, and quantify the effects of the transfer components of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. We find that the transfer multipliers are significantly larger under the fiscal regime—which results in a milder contraction—than under the monetary regime, primarily because inflationary pressures of this regime counteract the deflationary forces during the recession. Moreover, redistribution produces a Pareto improvement under the fiscal regime.

Introduction

In the wake of the financial crisis and the ensuing fiscal crisis, international organizations, as well as the EU and its Member States reacted by putting forth new tax policy regulations at the national and international level. These innovations constitute a significant change, in tax policy and for the EU fiscal regime. In this chapter, the editors give an overview of the context and process that gave rise to the boom in regulations in recent years. All chapters in the book are outlined in the context of the tax ecosystem. This setting remains as a guideline throughout the analyses of global policies in the book.

Sophisticated Financial Engineering and Tax Arbitrage

This chapter delves into the inner sanctum of corporate organization in order to find evidence of rise or decline in the use of techniques of tax arbitrage by the corporate sector within the EU region. We follow then with an analysis of the use of sophisticated financial instruments in tax mitigation techniques in the EU to assess the impact of finance-oriented tax mitigation techniques. Our conclusion is not positive. It appears to us that in comparison with the US (and possibly China), the European fiscal regime failed to address a core political issue. These political conditions encourage the use of those diverging rules and regulations one against the other and affect jurisdictional arbitrage with the overall aim of tax mitigation. Europe is emerging as the playground for international corporations’ tax arbitrage and financial techniques of tax mitigation.