Production sharing agreement

Production sharing agreements (PSAs) or production sharing contracts (PSCs) are a common type of contract signed between a government and a resource extraction company (or group of companies) concerning how much of the resource (usually oil) extracted from the country each will receive.

Production sharing agreements were first used in Bolivia in the early 1950s, although their first implementation similar to today's was in Indonesia in the 1960s.^[1] Today they are often used in the Middle East and Central Asia, overall 40 countries worldwide.

In production sharing agreements the country's government awards the execution of exploration and production activities to an oil company. The oil company bears the mineral and financial risk of the initiative and explores, develops and ultimately produces the field as required. When successful, the company is permitted to use the money from produced oil to recover capital and operational expenditures, known as "cost oil". The remaining money is known as "profit oil", and is split between the government and the company. In most of the production sharing agreements, changes in international oil prices or production rate affect the company's share of production.

Production sharing agreements can be beneficial to governments of countries that lack the expertise and/or capital to develop their resources and wish to attract foreign companies to do so. They can be very profitable agreements for the oil companies involved, but often involve considerable risk.

The amount of costs recoverable is often limited to an amount called "cost stop". If the costs incurred by the company are bigger than the cost stop, the company is entitled to recover only the costs limited to the cost stop. When the costs incurred are smaller than the cost stop, the difference between the costs and the cost stop is called "excess oil". Usually, but not necessarily, the excess oil is shared between the government and the company according to the same rules of the profit oil. If the recoverable costs are higher than the cost stop the contract is defined as saturated.

The cost stop gives to the government the guarantee to recover part of the production (as long the price of the crude produced is higher than the cost stop), especially during the first years of production when the costs are higher. Since the beginning of the 80s all major contracts include invariable a clause of cost stop. The cost stop can be a fixed amount, but in most case it is a percentage of the cost of the crude.

تُعدّ عقود تقاسم المخاطر (RSC)، التي طُبّقت لأول مرة في ماليزيا، مُختلفةً عن عقود تقاسم الإنتاج (PSC) التي طُرحت لأول مرة عام 1976، والتي عُدّلت مؤخرًا العام الماضي لتصبح عقود تقاسم الإنتاج المُحسّنة لاستخلاص النفط (EOR)، والتي ترفع معدل الاستخلاص من 26% إلى 40%. وباعتبارها اتفاقية قائمة على الأداء، فقد طُوّرت في ماليزيا ليستفيد منها الشعب الماليزي والشركاء من القطاع الخاص على حدٍ سواء، وذلك من خلال تحقيق عائد استثماري ناجح ومُجدٍ لهذه الحقول الهامشية. وفي منتدى أسبوع تحسين الإنتاج الآسيوي الذي نظّمه مركز استدامة الطاقة والاقتصاد في ماليزيا بتاريخ 27 يوليو 2011، أوضح نائب وزير المالية، معالي السيناتور داتو إير دونالد ليم سيانغ تشاي، أن عقود تقاسم المخاطر الرائدة تدعو إلى تحقيق أهداف الإنتاج على النحو الأمثل، وتُتيح نقل المعرفة من المشاريع المشتركة بين الجهات الفاعلة الأجنبية والمحلية في تطوير 106 حقول هامشية في ماليزيا، والتي تحتوي مجتمعةً على 580 مليون برميل من المكافئ النفطي (BOE) في سوق الطاقة الحالي الذي يشهد طلبًا مرتفعًا وموارد قليلة. ^{[ 2 ]}

• OGEL 1 (2005) - عقود تقاسم الإنتاج ، عدد خاص من مجلة معلومات قانون النفط والغاز والطاقة
• OGEL 4 (2010) - أدوات منح التنمية والحكومات المضيفة ، عدد خاص من مجلة معلومات قانون النفط والغاز والطاقة

• اتفاقيات النفط والغاز