Journal of Business and Management Sciences

The international oil companies (IOCs) in Nigeria have expressed concern over the federal government’s intention to change the laws governing the oil and gas industry including the fiscal terms. They claim that the proposed fiscal terms will affect their bottom line and trigger uncertainties in their investments in the upstream sector. Therefore, this research was conducted with the aim of evaluating the effect of the proposed fiscal terms on upstream petroleum investment, in which the IOCs are involved. Hence, document analysis and economic indicators of investment profitability were employed in the conduct of this study. The results show that, even though petroleum projects remain profitable under the proposed fiscal terms, the lack of fiscal stability will negatively affect investment at least in the short term. This study should be of assistance to policy makers, legislators, industry regulators and other stakeholders to better appreciate the implications of the PIB-proposed fiscal system and terms on investment in the upstream petroleum sector.

Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2014, 2(2), 45-57. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-2-2-3
Pub. Date: July 17, 2014

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Production Sharing or Joint Venturing: What Is the Optimum Petroleum Contractual Arrangement for the Exploitation of Nigeria Oil and Gas?

by SANI SAIDU and HAMIDU ABUBAKAR SADIQ

Original Research

Over time, stakeholders in the Nigerian oil and gas industry have been experimenting different contractual arrangement with the view of coming up with a best contractual arrangement for the industry. However, any shift from one contractual arrangement to another may affect the revenue generation position of the government and investments potentialities of the foreign oil companies. Similarly, the growing concern ranging from challenges of sustainability to transparency and accountability of transactions in the industry put the contractual arrangements on which the industry operates under question. Therefore, this study is aimed at finding out which among joint venture (JV) and production sharing contract (PSC) is optimal for exploitation of the Nigerian oil and gas industry in terms of economic rent, transparency and accountability derivable from the contract. Using contractual elements, pattern-matching and content analysis was used as the main techniques in analysing data. The results of the study have proved JV optimal in terms of economic rent, while PSC was found optimal in terms of accountability and transparency. On the overall, the results proved JV as optimal for the stakeholders in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. The study recommends government to place more emphasis on JVs in the industry, increase efforts towards fight against corruption in its agencies and officials, and increase the disclosure requirements of both its agencies and other operators in the industry particularly on those aspects of the processes that are more prone to corruption. Lastly, the FOCs operating in the industry should embrace and implement internationally acceptable good industry practices.

Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2014, 2(2), 35-44. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-2-2-2
Pub. Date: July 17, 2014

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Is FDI Spillover Conditioned on Financial Development and Trade Liberalization: Evidence from UMCs

by Mahya Nobakht and Seyedashkan Madani

Original Research

Developing countries take Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as leverage for economic growth and development as a result of FDI technology spillovers. However, the effect of FDI inflows on economic growth of host countries is conditional on the abilities of those countries in absorbing and accumulating external knowledge. The related literature paid particular attention to the role of the financial system and trade liberalization of recipients. Thus, this paper investigated empirically the intermediary roles of the financial system and trade liberalization as Absorptive Capacity (AC) factors on the FDI led growth nexus. This study provided data evidence from 33 Upper-Middle-income Countries (UMCs) over the period of 1990–2011 to contribute to the existing literature. This empirical study employed the dynamic panel “difference” GMM estimator proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991); since it prevents the biases inherent to economic growth models including auto-correlation, unobserved heterogeneity, and endogeneity between explanatory variables. The results indicated the development of the domestic financial system facilitated FDI technology spillovers in order to enhance the economic growth of UMCs. However, the empirical findings also showed a negative effect of trade openness on stimulating the FDI spillovers.

Journal of Business and Management Sciences. 2014, 2(2), 26-34. DOI: 10.12691/jbms-2-2-1
Pub. Date: April 21, 2014

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