Policy has to be tailored to the respective gas resource potential and the expected gas demand of the country, with the aim of fostering gas investments. As a result, the legal framework should state the priorities for gas uses between domestic and export uses and include incentives such as longer appraisal periods and production periods than for oil; special fiscal incentives must be included for promoting gas activities and principles for gas pricing; mandatory joint development of gas discoveries between several licensee companies must be addressed; and provisions for unconventional gas must be included.
Knowledge tools
The kind of technical support available to governments for planning, negotiating, implementing, and monitoring investments in the extractives sector is being enhanced by the use of Internet-based tools such as the Negotiation Support Portal, designed by Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and aimed at host g overnments (www .NegotiationSupport.org). This sort of tool is likely to evolve into an invaluable source of data, tools, and resources to tackle many of the problems discussed in this chapter. Further, for examples of petroleum and mineral contracts available in the public domain, there is Resourcecontracts. org, a repository developed by CCSI, the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), and the World Bank. It also provides annotations of the contracts’ environmental, fiscal, operational, and social provisions to facilitate comprehension of what are often lengthy and complex documents. There are well over 1,000 contracts from around 90 countries available. In spite of these excellent initiatives, the crucial bottleneck for most governments will probably remain one of securing access to the right combination of information, expertise, and skills.
NOTES
1. Rent seeking can take many forms: offers or solicitations of bribes and illicit payments to or by government officials, fraudulent declarations to the tax authorities, embezzlement of state funds, conflicts of interest of officials who have an ownership stake in companies doing business with the government, inappropriate use of position to influence government decisions, and others. A World Bank (2008, 2) report on the Democratic Republic of Congo noted how, for historical reasons, a culture of rent seeking had developed in the DRC. 2. Of course, they may also do both, with the sector law repeating the more authoritative statement contained in the
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constitutional document. For comparative studies of approaches adopted in mining, see Bastida, WardenFernandez, and Waelde 2005. For a comparable multi-author study on petroleum law, see Duval et al. 2009. 3. Article 268 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/republic /constitution.php. 4. Mineral Resources Law of the People’s Republic of China, 1986, amended 1996, art. 3, para. 1. 5. Transitional Government of Somalia, Petroleum Law 2007, art. 5.1. 6. Such leases will typically not contain an arbitration clause for the settlement of disputes, in contrast to the petroleum and minerals agreements between investors and states found outside the United States (Hood 2012). 7. 1962 General Assembly Resolution 1803 on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources: GA res. 1803 (XVII), 17 UN GAOR Supp. (no. 17), UN Doc. A/5217 (1962), p. 15. This has been supported by later judgments of the International Court of Justice. 8. For an overview of the literature on maritime delimitation disputes, see Cameron 2006. 9. The Memorandum to the Ghana Minerals and Mining Bill of 2006 provides an explanation of the changing policy priorities that made necessary certain provisions in the new law. The Mozambique Petroleum Law of 2001 states that its adoption is to ensure “greater competitiveness in the petroleum sector and guarantees the protection of rights and assets of participants in Petroleum Operations.” Petroleum Law No.3/2001 of 21 February 2001, Preamble. 10. Republic of Liberia, National Petroleum Policy November 2012, 7. 11. Liberian National Petroleum Policy, 19. 12. Department of Mineral Resources, Pretoria, South Africa, 2010, https://www.westerncape.gov.za/Text/2004/5 / theminingcharter . pdf. See also Department of Mineral Resources’ 2015 Assessment of the Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment for the South African Mining Industry, http:// www.dmr.gov.za/mining-charter-assessment-report.html. 13. See the National Minerals and Mining Policy of Ghana, Accra, November 2014, principle 18, 22. 14. This list is not exhaustive. Detailed intentions under each of these, and other possible policy headings, would normally be provided by implementing legislation, model contracts, contract award procedures, regulation, and fiscal regimes. 15. Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, Petroleum Law of Somalia, Law No XGB/712/08 dated 06/08/2008; and President’s Office Ref JS/XM/182/06/2008, August 7, 2008. Sourcebook reference, https://mopmr.gov.so/wp-content /uploads/2019/07/Signed_Petroleum_law-2008-final.pdf.
