This thesis focuses on the relationship between the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) economies and global climate change mitigation policies with a view to determining the energy exports demand security risks of OPEC member states. The successful implementation of a universally adopted climate regime has been marred with controversies as different interest groups have raised their concerns about all the options presented so far. OPEC as the major crude oil exporting group in the world has been in the forefront of these debates and negotiations. OPEC’s major concern is the envisaged adverse impacts of the industrialised countries carbon reductions on its members' economies. Several studies have shown that when industrialised countries adopt carbon dioxide emissions reduction policies in line with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as carbon taxes and energy efficiency strategies, OPEC’s net price of crude oil decreases at the same time as a reduction in the quantity of crude oil products sold. OPEC believes that such climate change policy-induced fall in crude oil exports revenues would have a significant negative effect on its members' economies. With the limitations related to the assumptions of the existing energy economy models on the impacts of climate change mitigation policies on OPEC’s economies (Barnett et al, 2004), this study opts for a risk based model. This model quantifies the energy exports demand security risks of OPEC members with special interest on crude oil. This study also investigates the effects of carbon reduction policies on crude oil prices vis-à-vis the impacts of crude oil prices on OPEC’s economies. To address these three main issues, this thesis adopts a three-prong approach. The first paper addresses the impacts of climate change mitigation on crude oil prices using a dynamic panel model. Results from the estimated dynamic panel model show that the relationship between crude oil prices and climate change mitigation is positive. The results also indicate that a 1% change in carbon intensity causes a 1.6% and 8.4% changes in crude oil prices in the short run and long run, respectively. The second paper focuses on the impacts of crude oil prices on OPEC economies using a panel vector auto regression (VAR) approach, highlighting the exposure of OPEC members to the volatile crude oil prices. The findings from the panel VAR model show that the relationship between OPEC members’ economic growth and crude oil prices is positive and economic growth in OPEC member states respond positively and significantly to a 10% deviation in crude oil prices by 1.4% in the short run and 1.7% in the long run. The third paper creates an index of the risks OPEC members face when there is a decline in the demand for their crude oil exports. To show these risks, this study develops two indexes to show the country level risks and the contributions to the OPEC-wide risks exposure. The results from the indexes show that OPEC members that are more dependent on crude oil exports are faced with more energy exports demand risks. The findings from this thesis are relevant for the development of a new OPEC energy policy that should accommodate the realities of a sustainable global climate regime. They are also useful to the respective governments of the countries that are members of OPEC and non-OPEC crude oil exporting countries. Finally, the outcomes of this thesis also contribute to the climate change and energy economics literature, especially for academic and subsequent research purposes.

Aus der Einleitung: "Ein wachsender Bedarf an nachhaltig verfügbaren Rohstoffen und knapper werdende Rohölressourcen steigern die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung natürlicher Faserstoffe. Das eröffnet neue, über den traditionellen Einsatz von Papier hinausgehende Anwendungen für cellulosische Fasern, beispielsweise in maßgeschneiderten 3D-Verpackungslösungen, im Leichtbau oder in Konstruktionswerkstoffen. Bei der Erschließung neuer Anwendungsbereiche steht neben der zentralen Kostenfrage das Ziel im Vordergrund, die Bauteile technologisch effizient herzustellen. Dafür sollen weitestgehend etablierte Technologien für die Verarbeitung der eingesetzten Halbzeuge einsetzbar sein, z.T. sind aber auch neue Technologien erforderlich, wie z.B. integriertes Fügen und Umformen. Diese Entwicklungen sind nicht auf die oft als Vorreiter angesehene Automobilbranche beschränkt, sondern betreffen z.B. auch die Möbelbranche, die Baustoffindustrie und zunehmend auch die Papierwirtschaft. ..."

This thesis enhances rare literature focusing on modeling and forecasting of term structure of crude oil markets. Using dynamic Nelson-Siegel model, crude oil term structure is decomposed to three latent factors, which are further forecasted using both parametric and dynamic neural network approaches. In-sample fit using Nelson-Siegel model brings encouraging results and proves its applicability on crude oil futures prices. Forecasts obtained by focused time-delay neural network are in general more accurate than other benchmark models. Moreover, forecast error is decreasing with increasing time to maturity.

The problem of weak economic development in Nigeria despite a substantial inflow of revenues from oil exports especially from the early 1970s and other subsequent periods is an important issue to examine. This outcome presents a number of problems for any government regime in Nigeria seeking to provide solutions to enable the country to escape the adverse effects of natural resource wealth. At present, the Nigerian government is still struggling to find solutions to tackle the deteriorating state of affairs, particularly in terms of unemployment, rising food prices and internal security. The main aim of this study is to help understand the dynamic relationship between natural resource wealth and economic development. This research study analyses the trajectory of economic and political development in Nigeria over the period 1960 to 2010. This study employs historical political economy and empirical approaches in examining the relationship between oil wealth and economic development. This method distinguishes the study from others carried out in the literature, particularly from those on Nigeria where the common approach in this strand has been to examine the relationship using economic theories alone. The rationale for the approach employed in this study is that Nigeria has its own unique development in terms of politics, which has been influenced by the social structure and colonial history of the country and thus the impact of oil on economic growth should be investigated separately using a historical and empirical approach so as to capture time trend interactions between societal issues, politics and economic outcomes. First, this study examined the relationship between oil and economic performance using social, political and economic factors such as ethnic and regional differences, political instability, changes in ownership structure of the oil sector and government expenditure, which is largely financed by oil revenues. Next, the research empirically examined the impact of these factors on economic sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing. Afterwards, it analyses the impact of political and economic events in the preceding periods on the current or subsequent period that coincided with a return to democratic rule on major economic sectors. In general, the results show that the period, which marked a transition to a stable political regime, has no impact on economic performance from 1999 - 2010. Implicitly, this means that democracy in isolation is not a process that accompanies economic development and that a strong policy which could foster national unity and overcome regional and ethnic differences is needed. In order to promote sound economic development this policy should be dynamic, specific and directed to the promotion of a national agenda that will target and benefit important sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing through creating forward and backward linkages in a multiplier effect.

Transportation of oil and gas by the Sea characterizes challenges from a safety viewpoint. In this type of transportation, different sizes of special tankers carrying oil and gas. The marine transportation of these scarce natural riches is involved with risks and hazards, which may lead to many losses; for instance, wasting oil and gas, injuries of people, damaging ships and properties, and damaging environment. The main purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the risks, hazards, and accidents during transportation of oil and gas (mainly Crude Oil, liquefied petroleum gas, and Liquefied natural gas) by the Sea with concentrating on transport safety. Hence, a better understanding of these risks and hazards can contribute to decrease of addressed losses.This study is carried out on risks associated with maritime transportation of oil and gas starting with describing the general casual chain (dealing with causes, incidents, accidents and consequences/causalities), continuing with describing risk analysis techniques (including event tree analysis and fault tree analysis) and risk control measures/options, and finally implementing aforesaid investigations on real data from two areas; namely UK territorial waters and the Baltic Sea.In this study, the results of analyzing data from 1991 to 2010 in UK territorial waters revealed that collision and grounding were two most common accidents in terms of crude oil tankers, LPG and LNG carriers in which 44% of all accidents were equally divided between collision and grounding. In this case, investigation on data from 2004 to 2010 in the Baltic Sea regarding tankers with cargo types of crude oil, oil, oil product and gases also repeated the same findings in that collision and grounding shared the biggest proportion of accidents with 50% and 34% respectively. Analysis of data in UK territorial waters provided that human factor was the main reason behind accidents with 46% followed by technical factor with 39%. Human factor and technical factor recognized also as the main causes of accidents in the Baltic Sea with 33% and 25% respectively. Regarding this subject, human error recognized as the chief culprit and failures in part of design & construction was the second main initial causes of accidents in terms of both human and technical factors. The results of analyzing records from the Baltic Sea also provided that whilst human factor shared the biggest proportion of causes behind accidents, technical factor was the only cause of accidents contributing to all types of accidents. Findings are useful from safety outlook as if specifying accidents and causes of accidents during the Sea transportation of oil and gas. / Program: MSc in Industrial Engineering - Logistics Management

Despite the extent of a theoretical framework in financial market studies, a vast majority of the traders, investors and computer scientists have relied only on technical and timeseries data for predicting future prices. So far, the forecasting models have rarely incorporated macro-economic and market fundamentals successfully, especially with short-term predictions ranging less than a month. In this investigation on the predictability of certain financial markets, an attempt has been made to incorporate a un-exampled and encompassing set of parameters into an Artificial Neural Network prediction system. Experiments were carried out on three market instruments ??? namely currency exchange rates, share prices and oil prices. The choice of parameters for inclusion or exclusion, and the time frame adopted for the experimental sets were derived from the market literature. Good directional prediction accuracies were achieved for currency exchange rates and share prices with certain parameters as inputs, which consisted of predicting short-term movements based on past movements. These predictions were better than the results produced by a traditional least square prediction method. The trading strategy developed based on the predictions also achieved a higher percentage of winning trades. No significant predictions were observed for oil prices. These results open up questions in the microstructure of the markets and provide an insight into the inputs required for market forecasting in the corresponding time frame, for future investigation. The study concludes by advocating the use of trend based input parameters and suggests ways to improve neural network forecasting models.

Thermal recovery methods are frequently used to enhance the production of heavy crude oils. Steam-based processes are the most economically popular and effective methods for heavy oil recovery for several decades. In general, there are various mechanisms over steam injection to enhance and have additional oil recovery. However, among these mechanisms, steam distillation plays pivotal role in the recovery of crude oil during thermal recovery process. In this study, an experimental investigation was carried out to investigate the role of various minerals present in both sandstone and carbonate formations as well as the effect of steam temperature on steam distillation process. Two different types of dead-heavy crude oils were tested in a batch autoclave reactor with 30 % water and the content of the reactor (crude oil, 10 % rock and mineral). The results were compared as the changes in the density, viscosity and chemical composition (SARA and TPH analyses) of heavy crude oil. Five different mineral types (bentonite, sepiolite, kaolinite, illite and zeolite) were added into the original crude oil and reservoir rocks to observe their effects on the rheological and compositional changes during steam distillation process. Analysis of the results of experiments with Camurlu and Bati Raman heavy crude oils in the presence of different minerals such as Bentonite, Zeolite, Illite, Sepiolite, and Kaolinite in both sandstone and limestone reservoir rocks indicate that steam distillation produces light end condensates which can be considered as solvent or condensate bank during steam flooding operation. It was also illustrated that minerals in reservoir formations perform the function of producing distilled light oil compounds, resulting in enhancement of heavy crude oils recovery in steam flooding. Measurements showed that the remaining oil after steam distillation has higher viscosity and density. On the other hand, the effect of steam distillation is more pronounced in limestone reservoirs compared to sandstone reservoirs for the given heavy crude oil and steam temperature. Among the five different minerals tested, kaolinite found to be the most effective mineral in terms of steam distillation.

This thesis consists of three essays on risk management in crude oil markets. In the first essay, the valuation of an oil sands project is studied using real options approach. Oil sands production consumes substantial amount of natural gas during extracting and upgrading. Natural gas prices are known to be stochastic and highly volatile which introduces a risk factor that needs to be taken into account. The essay studies the impact of this risk factor on the value of an oil sands project and its optimal operation. The essay takes into account the co-movement between crude oil and natural gas markets and, accordingly, proposes two models: one incorporates a long-run link between the two markets while the other has no such link. The valuation problem is solved using the Least Square Monte Carlo (LSMC) method proposed by Longsta ff and Schwartz (2001) for valuing American options. The valuation results show that incorporating a long-run relationship between the two markets is a very crucial decision in the value of the project and in its optimal operation. The essay shows that ignoring this long-run relationship makes the optimal policy sensitive to the dynamics of natural gas prices. On the other hand, incorporating this long-run relationship makes the dynamics of natural gas price process have a very low impact on valuation and the optimal operating policy. In the second essay, the relationship between the slope of the futures term structure, or the forward curve, and volatility in the crude oil market is investigated using a measure of the slope based on principal component analysis (PCA). The essay begins by reviewing the main theories of the relation between spot and futures prices and considering the implication of each theory on the relation between the slope of the forward curve and volatility. The diagonal VECH model of Bollerslev et al. (1988) was used to analyse the relationship between of the forward curve slope and the variances of the spot and futures prices and the covariance between them. The results show that there is a significant quadratic relationship and that exploiting this relation improves the hedging performance using futures contracts. The third essay attempts to model the spot price process of crude oil using the notion of convenience yield in a regime switching framework. Unlike the existing studies, which assume the convenience yield to have either a constant value or to have a stochastic behaviour with mean reversion to one equilibrium level, the model of this essay extends the Brennan and Schwartz (1985) model to allows for regime switching in the convenience yield along with the other parameters. In the essay, a closed form solution for the futures price is derived. The parameters are estimated using an extension to the Kalman filter proposed by Kim (1994). The regime switching one-factor model of this study does a reasonable job and the transitional probabilities play an important role in shaping the futures term structure implied by the model.

In the first part of this thesis the prices of six non-ferrous metals (aluminum, copper, lead, nickel, tin, and zinc) are used to assess the forecasting performance of GARCH models. We find that the forecasting performances of GARCH, EGARCH, and TGARCH models are similar. However, we suggest the use of the GARCH model because it is more parsimonious and has a slightly better statistical performance than the other two. In the second part, the prices of six non-ferrous metals and the price of crude oil are used to examine the dynamic links between oil and metal returns by using the BEKK specification of the multivariate GARCH model and the Granger causality-in-variance tests. Results of our study agree with the previous studies in that the crude oil market volatility leads all non-ferrous metal markets. In order to move as far away from the effects of 9/11, daily data for the period December 12, 2003 &ndash / December 15, 2008 is used for the data analysis part of the thesis.

<p>Agriculture has been the backbone of the economy in Nigeria providing employment and source of livelihood for the increasing population and accounting for over half of the GDP of the Nigeria economy at independence in 1960. However, the role it plays in the regional and economic development of the country has diminished over the years due to the dominant role of the crude oil sector in the economy. With the increasing food demand in Nigeria, the country has available input natural resources and potential for increasing the volume of crop production towards meeting the food and nutritional requirement of the rapidly increasing population and guarantee food security in the country. The study was undertaken to analyse the effect of different factors and policies on the changes in trend of crop production and investigate the possible effect of water resources development on increased volume of agricultural crop production in Nigeria.</p><p>The study revealed that there are opportunities for water resources development in the country through irrigation to supplement the water requirements and needs of farmers for agricultural production activities in many areas in the semi-arid and arid regions. Available data shows that there are available land and water resources that could be developed to support the production of food and agricultural development with opportunity for increased productivity.</p><p>However, while the water resources are unevenly distributed in the country, there is need for the efficient use and management of the available water resources and increasing the productive use especially in the northern region of the country where there is increasing incidence of drought and competing need for water among the different sectors of the economy. The study also made possible recommendations for policy formulation to address the current problems facing the agricultural sector in conjunction with the requirement for the development of the water resources.</p>