In various fields of economic endeavor, agents enjoy the option to “try, try again.” Failure in a particular pursuit often brings renewed effort to finally succeed. Many areas of R&D could be characterized in this fashion. Our purpose is to define and measure the value of this option to try...

We show that standard statistical tests of OPEC behavior have very low power across a wide range of alternative hypotheses regarding market structure. Consequently, it is difficult, given the current availability and precision of data on demand and costs, to distinguish collusive from...

The world oil market is regarded by many as a puzzle. Why are oil prices so volatile? What is OPEC and what does OPEC do? Where are oil prices headed in the long run? Is “peak oil” a genuine concern? Why did oil prices spike in the summer of 2008, and what role did speculators play? Any...

The term “petroleum property valuation” refers to the analytical procedure by which the commercial value of oil and gas fields is assessed. This assessment provides to prospective buyers and sellers, and other interested parties such as lenders and tax assessors, an estimate of the fair...

Conventional wisdom holds that dependence among geological prospects increases exploration risk. However, dependence also creates the option to truncate exploration if early results are discouraging. We show that the value of this option creates incentives for explorationists to plunge into...

We consider the impact of sequential investment and active management on the value of a portfolio of real options. The options are assumed to be interdependent, in that exercise of any one is assumed to produce, in addition to some intrinsic value based on an underlying asset, further...

Alternative market structures are distinguishable by the degree of parallel action exhibited by producers. We show that the correlation between output levels varies systematically with the degree of interdependence among firms, and establish an ordering among alternative behavioral hypotheses...

We take a simple tutorial approach to explain how option valuation can be applied in practice to the petroleum industry. We discuss a simple spreadsheet formulation, demonstrate how required input data can be extracted from market information, and give several exploration and development...