Discussion Papers,
Statistics Norway, Research Department

Abstract: We perform an empirical analysis of the extent to which ongoing technological change through R&D activity has offset the effect of ongoing depletion on the cost of finding additional reserves of oil in eight global regions. We introduce a finding cost function that among other factors depends on the cumulative number of past R&D expenses and cumulative past production, measuring technological change and depletion, respectively. For all our regions we find significant effects of both depletion and technological change on oil finding costs from 1981 to 2009, barring cyclical variations in finding costs that could come from changes in factor prices. For almost all regions technology more than mitigated depletion until around the mid-nineties. However, we find that depletion outweighed technological progress over the last decade.

Keywords: Oil; depletion; technological change; R&D; finding costs

JEL-codes: L71; Q31 January 2013

Full text files

93304  

Download statistics

• Statistics Norway, Research Department
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to L Maasø ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:ssb:dispap:732This page generated on 2024-10-30 04:36:28.