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The legal governance of oil and gas in Europe: an indicator analysis of the implementation of the Hydrocarbons Directive

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Hydrocarbons are traditional subjects to European Union (EU) law („acquis communitaire”). The short historical review reveals that quasi all aspects of upstream and downstream segments are covered by the legislation. The quantiative text search of the acquis indicates that the intensity of legislation making correlates with global drivers such as oil price booms and technology developments such as extraction of unconventional hydrocarbons by hydraulic fracturing. A quarter century after the Hydrocarbons Directive was published and transposed into national laws of Member States (MS), data allow to make a semi-quantitative assessment on how the Directive was implemented in MS, what were the major drivers of governments’ publication activity, and what impact it had on the oil and gas production activities, also in comparison with global price trends. The specific relevance of this study is on non-fuel minerals manegement of the EU, whether the introduction of such competitive bidding rules on EU scale would induce a greater interest among investors, and if the enhanced competition may bring more benefits to the states and the rejuvenation of the critical minerals extractive sector. The preliminary findings show that in some MS there is a positive correlation between the concession call publication activity and hydrocarbons production. To confirm these conclusions the analysis of an extended dataset including exploration data, investments, and social impacts is needed in order to disselect the effect of global market trends, the exhaustion of domestic geological reserves, and the different policy environments.
2021-10-21
MDPI
JRC125765
1996-1073 (online),   
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/19/6411,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125765,   
10.3390/en14196411 (online),   
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