Property Rights, Leases, Competition and Regulation in the Development of U.S. Shale Resources

最近页岩油气开采的繁荣是过去十年美国能源市场最重要的发展之一。虽然许多研究人员正在研究页岩油气市场的影响和运作，但拟议的研究旨在研究勘探公司为其页岩气开采活动而获得的私人和公有土地租赁的一个新的重要方面。鉴于许多州的监管基础设施并不适合这个新行业，单独谈判的租赁协议成为这个行业事实上的监管工具，但很少有人知道它们在标准经济标准方面的表现。通过分析租赁条款的私人谈判、政府监管和市场力量之间的相互作用，拟议的研究将为正在进行的关于监管钻井活动的最佳方式的立法辩论提供信息。此外，它还将有助于就个人谈判与自上而下的监管在减轻商业活动潜在的负面外部效应方面的价值进行更广泛的经济讨论。研究人员将使用新的数据集来分析由于最近开发的水平钻井技术，居民人口与石油和天然气开采活动之间的相互作用增加的核心问题。其中三个拟议项目将提供有关受影响物业周围各种活动发展的综合情况。这些项目的重点是衡量土地所有者和勘探公司对各种租赁条款的价值，他们各自在谈判租赁时就这些条款讨价还价的能力，监管和获得矿产的竞争在这种谈判中发挥的作用，以及租赁和钻探对住房市场的影响。第四个也是最后一个项目将集中在联邦和州政府举行的石油和天然气租赁拍卖中公司竞争和监管之间的相互作用。它将利用竞争性拍卖数据来推断最近激烈争论的钻探和勘探活动监管变化的隐含成本。该项目还将为举办此类拍卖的政府提供指导，指导它们如何更好地设计这些销售。

The recent boom in shale oil and gas extraction has been one of the most important developments in the U.S. energy market in the past decade. While many researchers are studying the impact and functioning of shale oil and gas markets, the proposed research aims at studying a new and important aspect regarding the leases on private as well as publicly-owned land which exploration firms acquire for their shale gas extraction activity. Given that the regulatory infrastructure in many states is not well developed for this new industry, individually negotiated lease agreements become de facto regulatory tool in this industry, but little is known about how they perform in terms of standard economic criteria. By analyzing the interplay between private negotiations of lease clauses, government regulation, and market power, the proposed research will inform ongoing legislative debates about the best way to regulate drilling activity. Moreover, it will contribute to a more general economic discussion about the value of individual negotiations versus top-down regulation in mitigating potential negative externalities of business activity. The investigators will use novel datasets to analyze questions central to the increased interaction between residential populations and oil and gas extraction activity due to recently developed horizontal drilling techniques. Three of the proposed projects will provide an integrated picture of the development of various activities surrounding affected properties. These projects are focused on measuring the value landowners and exploration companies place on various lease clauses, their respective abilities to bargain for such clauses when negotiating leases, the roles that regulation and competition for access to minerals play in such negotiations, and the impact of leasing and drilling on housing markets. The fourth and final project will focus on the interplay between firm competition and regulation in oil and gas lease auctions held by the federal and state governments. It will make use of competitive auction data to infer the implied costs of recent, and hotly-debated, changes in the regulation of drilling and exploratory activity. The project will also provide a guide to governments holding such auctions about better ways to design these sales.