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1 – 10 of over 34000Studies concerning Soviet taxation demonstrate a diversity of opinions on the nature of turnover taxes. Four major views on the subject have emerged: (1) turnover taxes are simply…
Abstract
Studies concerning Soviet taxation demonstrate a diversity of opinions on the nature of turnover taxes. Four major views on the subject have emerged: (1) turnover taxes are simply a sales (excise) tax on articles' of consumption sold to the Soviet consumer; (2) not all turnover taxes are a sales tax, some of them are a substitute for rent on production of certain industrial materials; (3) in addition to being a sales (excise) tax on consumer goods and rent on some industrial materials, there exists a third type of turnover tax which is levied on agricultural production of the peasantry; (4) turnover taxes are a portion of the surplus product produced in industry and agriculture.
Purpose – This chapter examines the socio-economic and political challenges facing Nigeria's oil-producing sector. The Niger Delta's main environmental and social problems arise…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter examines the socio-economic and political challenges facing Nigeria's oil-producing sector. The Niger Delta's main environmental and social problems arise from oil spills, gas flaring and degradation of the land.
Design/methodology/approach – This analysis is based on a review of government documents as well as materials produced by international development agencies.
Findings – In spite of the large profits made by oil companies operating in the Niger Delta, the people of the region live in squalor without basic amenities. This has resulted in an upsurge of violent activities orchestrated by community-based organizations wishing to draw international attention to the plight of the people in the area. In recent years, both national and international nongovernmental organizations have launched campaigns to address the issues, but little have been achieved because the oil companies are reluctant to be responsible corporate neighbors and the Nigerian government seem unwilling to devise solutions to address the problem.
Originality/value – This chapter suggests ways of developing an effective oil policy framework that will include all the stakeholders in the management of oil resources.
I study the economic implications of the world oil market dominated by OPEC and non-OPEC major oil producing countries using a general equilibrium model of trilateral trade with…
Abstract
I study the economic implications of the world oil market dominated by OPEC and non-OPEC major oil producing countries using a general equilibrium model of trilateral trade with oil duopoly. There are three countries and three goods, x, y, and oil (z). Home (H) is endowed with good x . Foreign (F) is endowed with good y and also produces oil (z). Middle (M) is an oil producing country and supplies oil only. I consider two types of oil market structure; (1) Cournot duopoly and (2) perfect competition. I find that Foreign is actually worse off under Cournot duopoly despite being a duopolist for wide range of parameter values that reflect real world situations. This is mainly due to reduced consumption of oil and reduced value of good y endowment under duopoly when Foreign is a net oil exporter or oil autarky, and is also due to worsening terms-of-trade effect under duopoly when Foreign is a net oil importer. Welfare reversal with higher welfare of Foreign under oil duopoly occurs only under highly unrealistic parameter values, and hence the main results of the study remain robust.
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Using the case of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, I argue that the catastrophe was less an example of a low probability-high catastrophe event than an…
Abstract
Using the case of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, I argue that the catastrophe was less an example of a low probability-high catastrophe event than an instance of socially produced risks and insecurities associated with deepwater oil and gas production during the neoliberal period after 1980. The disaster exposes the deadly intersection of the aggressive enclosure of a new technologically risky resource frontier (the deepwater continental shelf) with what I call a frontier of neoliberalized risk, a lethal product of cut-throat corporate cost-cutting, the collapse of government oversight and regulatory authority and the deepening financialization and securitization of the oil market. These two local pockets of socially produced risk and wrecklessness have come to exceed the capabilities of what passes as risk management and energy security. In this sense, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was produced by a set of structural conditions, a sort of rogue capitalism, not unlike those which precipitated the financial meltdown of 2008. The forms of accumulation unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico over three decades rendered a high-risk enterprise yet more risky, all the while accumulating insecurities and radical uncertainties which made the likelihood of a Deepwater Horizon type disaster highly overdetermined.
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Guan Wen, Youhua Ge, Dai Zhendong and Zheng Gao
The purpose of this paper is to investigate that if the lubrication system of a helicopter reducer is compromised, its gears and bearings will be at non-lubricating oil work…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate that if the lubrication system of a helicopter reducer is compromised, its gears and bearings will be at non-lubricating oil work state, which causes the reducer to be damaged in a very short time.
Design/methodology/approach
Various 2 per cent additives were injected and mixed with aeronautical oil to produce 45-min oil/mist lubrication and oil/air lubrication experiments performed upon aeronautical steel tribo-pairs.
Findings
The results show that the best anti-wear effect is produced by oil/air lubrication that contains 2 per cent T391. It consumes the least quantity of oil and produces the least wear width, the least rise in temperature and the best surface wear quality.
Originality/value
The technology of oil/air lubrication that contains an extreme-pressure and anti-wear additive is a feasible way to improve the operational ability of a helicopter transmission system that is out of oil.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine how shadow constituents are redefining corporate social responsibility (CSR) through activism, and how oil companies in Nigeria are…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how shadow constituents are redefining corporate social responsibility (CSR) through activism, and how oil companies in Nigeria are responding to this development.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper contributes to the conceptual framework of CSR which asserts that whereas all stakeholders of a company do not have an equal say in its strategic direction, they are affected by such direction, and must hence be considered.
Findings
The findings reveal these points: activists are gaining a strong foothold in forcing oil companies to cooperate with their vision of social change; Nigeria lacks legislation compelling oil companies to contribute to the development of their host communities; and although internal oil company documents suggest efforts to help their hosts communities have been made, no meaningful agreement between the oil companies and the indigenous communities have been reached.
Research limitations/implications
The paper encourages a broader conception of CSR. Shadow constituents have become such influence wielding stakeholders in organizations today that we need to explore more fully the role they play in dictating public agenda and influencing policy globally.
Practical implications
Multinational corporations can develop a better understanding of strategies and techniques that can enable them to balance the interests of a wider group of stakeholders and manage the interconnected social, environmental and economic impacts of their businesses.
Originality/value
This paper enriches the research database on CSR.
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The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel…
Abstract
The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel program. In July of 1979, the President asked for an $88 billion “crash program” to encourage development of synthetic fuels. To date, a three month struggle to reach a consensus between House and Senate conferees has brought only limited results. Compromise is emerging in the form of a proposal for a “synthetic fuels corporation.” The body would have the authority to disperse $20 billion in the form of federal loan guarantees and purchase agreements with more money to become available later.
Carbon emissions from gas flaring in the Nigerian oil and gas industry are both a national and international problem. Nigerian government policies to eliminate the problem…
Abstract
Purpose
Carbon emissions from gas flaring in the Nigerian oil and gas industry are both a national and international problem. Nigerian government policies to eliminate the problem 1960-2016 yielded little or no results. The Kyoto Protocol (KP) provides Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as an international market-based mechanism to reducing global carbon emissions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analytically highlight the potentials of CDM in eliminating carbon emissions in the Nigerian oil and gas industry.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reviewed the historical background of Kyoto protocol, Nigerian Government policies to eliminating gas flaring in its oil and gas industry 1960-2016 and CDM projects in the industry. The effectiveness of the policies and CDM projects towards ending this problem were descriptively analysed.
Findings
Government policies towards eliminating gas flaring with its attendant carbon emissions appeared not to be yielding the desired results. However, projects registered under CDM in the industry looks effective in ending the problem.
Research limitations/implications
Therefore, the success recorded by CDM projects has the policy implication of encouraging Nigeria to engage on establishing more CDM projects that ostensibly proved effective in reducing CO2 emissions through gas flaring reductions in its oil and gas industry. Apparent effectiveness of studied CDM should provide a way forward for the country in eliminating gas flaring in its oil and gas industry which is also a global menace. Nigeria could achieve this by providing all needed facilitation to realising more CDM investments.
Practical implications
CDM as a policy has proved effective in eliminating gas flaring in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The government should adopt this international policy to achieve more gas flaring reductions.
Social implications
Social problems of respiratory diseases, water pollution and food shortage among others due to gas flaring are persisting in oil and gas producing areas as government policies failed to end the problem. CDM projects in the industry have proved effective in eliminating the problem, thus improving the social welfare of the people and ensuring sustainable development.
Originality/value
The paper analysed the effectiveness of Nigerian Government policies and an international market-based mechanism towards ending gas flaring in its oil and gas industry.
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Ilya Kuzminov, Alexey Bereznoy and Pavel Bakhtin
This paper aims to study the ongoing and emerging technological changes in the global energy sector from the frequently neglected perspective of their potential destructive impact…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the ongoing and emerging technological changes in the global energy sector from the frequently neglected perspective of their potential destructive impact on the Russian economy.
Design/methodology/approach
Having reviewed existing global energy forecasts made by reputable multilateral and national government agencies, major energy corporations and specialised consulting firms, the authors noticed that most of them are by and large based on the extrapolation of conventional long-term trends depicting gradual growth of fossil fuels’ demand and catching-up supply. Unlike this approach, the paper focuses on the possible cases when conventional trends are broken, supply–demand imbalances become huge and the situation in the global energy markets is rapidly and dramatically changing with severe consequences for the Russian economy, seriously dependent on fossil fuels exports. Revealing these stress scenarios and major drivers leading to their realisation are in the focus of the research. Based on the Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Values (analytical framework) (STEEPV) approach, the authors start from analysing various combinations of factors capable to launch stress scenarios for the Russian economy. Formulating concrete stress scenarios and assessing their negative impact on the Russian economy constitute the next step of the analysis. In conclusion, the paper underlines the urgency to integrate stress analysis related to global energy trends into the Russian national systems of technology foresight and strategic planning, which are now in the early stages of development.
Findings
The analysis of global energy market trends and various combinations of related economic, political, technological and ecological factors allowed to formulate four stress scenarios particularly painful for the Russian economy. They include the currently developing scenario “Collapse of oil prices”, and three potential ones: “Gas abundance”, “Radical de-carbonisation” and “Hydrogen economy”. One of the most important conclusions of the paper is that technology-related drivers are playing the leading role in stress scenario realisation, but it is usually a specific combination of other drivers (interlacing with technology-related factors) that could trigger the launch a particular scenario.
Research limitations/implications
This study’s approach is based on the assumption that Russia’s dependence on hydrocarbons exports as one of the main structural characteristics of the Russian economy will remain intact. However, for the long-term perspective, this assumption might not hold true. So, new research will be needed to review the stress scenarios within the context of radical diversification of the Russian economy.
Practical implications
This paper suggests a number of practical steps aimed at introducing stress analysis as one of the key functions within the energy-related sectoral components of the Russian national systems of technology forecasting and strategic planning.
Originality/value
The novelty of this paper is determined both by the subject of the analysis and approach taken to reveal it. In contrast to most of research in this area, the main focus has been moved from the opportunities and potential benefits of contemporary technology-related global energy shifts to their possible negative impact on the national economy. Another important original feature of the approach is that existing global energy forecasts are used only as a background for core analysis centred around the cases when conventional energy trends are broken.
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