China is appraised to have the world's largest exploitable reserves of shale gas, although several legal, regulatory, environmental and investment-related issues will likely restrain its scope. China's capacity to successfully face these hurdles and produce commercial shale gas will have a...

Climate regulation of the electricity sector is one of the most important growing — and rapidly changing — areas of law and policy today. This is both because of the critical role that electricity plays in modern society, acting as economic lifeblood, and because of electricity's part in...

After eight years of non-engagement, the new administration and the U.S. Congress, led by a majority in the President’s party, are rapidly developing climate policy legislation. This paper summarizes past efforts to establish a national climate policy in the United States as well as the major...

Due to the recent drop in oil prices, there is a strong interest in the influence of the shale revolution on the global supply and demand of hydrocarbon fuels. Consequently, the attention of many economists and industry analysts is drawn to the technological, institutional and regulatory aspects...

Nearly every U.S. state has environmental provisions in its constitution. These provisions cover a wide range of issues concerning the manner in which the environment and natural resources are to be governed (e.g., public funding, eminent domain, public trust, access to water, legislative...

This paper examines the supply of U.S. LTO from both a theoretical and empirical point of view. The theory model combines endogenous rig activity and stylized reservoir pressure mechanics with the classic Hotelling model for exhaustible resource extraction. The empirical section presents a...

We examine the problem of the intertemporal allocation of the solid waste of cities within the United States to spatially distributed landfills and incinerators, taking into account that capacity at existing and potential landfills is scarce. Amendments to the Solid Waste Disposal Act have been...

The paper discusses the practical possibilities of achieving increased downstream processing and the policies that are commonly used for this purpose. It reviews the reasons why forward vertical integration is not always an optimal choice for extractive industry companies. It finds little...

Local content policies in the context of extractive industries have attracted increased interest in recent years. Most countries with a significant extractive industry have included local content requirements either in their legislation or exploitation contracts. Such efforts may be constrained...

In an effort to measure and track marine-dependent economic activities, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has developed two statistical tools: The Economics: National Ocean Watch (ENOW) and the Marine Economy Satellite Account (MESA). In both efforts, the...