Thai petroleum concession contract : proposal for revision

Domestic demand for petroleum coupled with rising world oil prices have become burden to the Thai government. One idea is a legislative solution which requires modifying and updating petroleum law. A condition a petroleum law must meet to maximise state revenue is that the law must provide tools for handling exceptional cases, e.g. production from large and small fields, because the contract pattern contains the general assumption that large fields are profitable. Sliding scale royalties and income tax, as well as a windfall profit (the Special Remuneratory Benefit) are suited to generating maximum state revenue and are fair to international oil companies upon consideration of the field sizes and frontiers. But what should the rate be? The proposed fiscal incentive options aim to lower the economic cut-off thereby increasing the cumulative reserves which can be economically produced. Some provisions of the existing petroleum law and concession contract which should be made for amendment at the first stage are submitted in this thesis. As for Thailand as an oil importing country, factors other than fiscal aspects need to be considered, for example, issue of a maritime area subjected to overlapping claimed by Thailand and its neighbours. Action should be taken to resolve a state of uncertainty for interested oil companies. The issue of company size is also important as it is involved in marginal fields. A large oil company would prefer to transfer its right of a marginal field or declining field to another smaller company. Developing a marginal field depends on a mixture of technical, commercial and regulatory issues. Smaller sized companies appear to have more flexible work arrangements.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo