L'industrie d'exploration-production d'hydrocarbures a vécu une accélération technologique spectaculaire au début des années 1970. Les relations entre les acteurs de cette industrie se sont aussi profondément transformées depuis cette date. Cette thèse démontre qu'il existe un lien étroit entre l'accélération technologique et les transformations organisationnelles dans l'industrie d'exploration-production d'hydrocarbures. Dans une première partie, elle développe les acquis de la théorie économique en matière d'organisation industrielle. Dans une deuxième partie, elle les applique à trois types de relations : celles entre les États propriétaires de ressources d'hydrocarbures et les compagnies pétrolières internationales ; celles entre les compagnies pétrolières internationales et leurs sous-traitants, les sociétés prestataires de services parapétroliers ; celles enfin entre les compagnies pétrolières internationales elles-mêmes.

La thèse discute des conséquences des changements majeurs du modèle de la demande de gaz décrits précédemment. L´exigence de flexibilité à court terme a été l´une des principales caractéristiques de la demande de gaz pour la production d´électricité. Ainsi, la capacité de l´industrie du gaz à fournir des services flexibles à court terme a été valorisée par le biais du marché de l´électricité. Cela signifie une augmentation de la valeur économique des services permettant d´adopter une position attentiste vis-à-vis de la consommation avant toute prise de décision. Différents secteurs de l´industrie du gaz ont été affectés par les variations de la demande, c´est le cas de la production des champs de gaz, du stockage et des mécanismes d´importation du gaz qui ont été incités à la flexibilité. L´introduction des outils de flexibilité, qu’impliquent les variations de la demande, dépend directement des services de réseau. Par conséquent la concrétisation de la valeur économique de la flexibilité de l´industrie gazière dépend des services de réseau.Le réseau de transports de gaz est un élément-clé de l´industrie gazière portant sur deux types de flexibilités physiques: la mobilité et l´aptitude au stockage. Les propriétés physiques du gaz naturel permettent la flexibilité par la gestion des différentiels de pression. Les différentiels de pression contrôlent les mouvements de gaz. Le réseau est de loin le principal mécanisme de transport de gaz et donc un élément majeur de la filière du gaz permettant le commerce de cette matière première. Cependant, le réseau peut aussi être l´une des parties les plus couteuses de l´industrie gazière et, une fois les investissements réalisés ils ne sont ni remboursables, ni récupérables par un autre moyen car ils n'ont pas d’autres utilisations, ce sont les coûts irrécupérables. Malgré cela, la spécificité de le utilisation des actifs des réseaux évolue au cours du développement du réseau.L´intervention des réseaux de transport dans la prestation de services de flexibilité du gaz est une condition obligatoire de la flexibilité du système gazier. Premièrement parce que les services de réseau sont complémentaires de tout autre instrument de flexibilité tels que le stockage souterrain, les infrastructures GNL et le commerce de gaz. Deuxièmement, parce que les services du réseau de transport gazier, tel le que stock en conduite, peuvent également être compétitifs vis à vis d´autres instruments de flexibilité dégroupé.Par conséquent, la régulation du réseau doit prendre en compte l´impact à court et à long terme des règles d´incitation. Compte tenu du fait que le développement du réseau dépend des exigences de flux prévisibles, des variations importantes de la demande de gaz et les changements de flux qui en découlent auront un impact sur l´activité d´exploitation des réseaux gaziers. D´un côté le développement du réseau dépend de la prévision des besoins de flux, et de l´autre, la flexibilité des infrastructures du réseau conditionne nécessairement celle de l´utilisation. Par conséquent, les variations de la demande, responsable de l´accroissement des exigences de flexibilité ainsi que des variations des flux de gaz qui en découlent doivent avoir un impact sur l´exploitation du réseau de gaz et sur l´incitation aux investissements d’infrastructure. / This thesis discusses the consequences of the major changes in gas demand patterns. The requirement of short term flexibility has been one of the main features of electricity generation gas demand. As consequence, the capacity of gas industry to provide short term flexibility services has been valorized through electricity market. It means an increasing economic value to services allowing waiting and seeing before consumption decision. Different parts of the gas industry was impacted by the changes on demand, for instance gas fields productions, storage and gas importation mechanisms were incited to offer flexible provisions. The introduction of tools to provide flexibility required by demand depends on network services. It means the realization of the flexibility value of gas industry depends on gas network services. The gas transport network is the key part of gas industry, and it may provide two kinds of gas physical flexibility: mobility and storability. The physical properties of natural gas allow flexibility by means of pressure differential management. The change on pressures may compress natural gas and the pressures differences drive gas motions. The network has been, by far, the main mechanism to carry gas, thus an essential part of the gas industry chain to allow commodity trade. Network, however, may be one of the most expensive parts of gas industry, and, after the investment done, it becomes sunk costs. But the specificity of networks assets changes in the course of network development. The use of transport network in the provision of gas flexibility services is a necessary condition to provide flexibility in the gas system. First, because network services are complementary of any other flexibility tool, as underground storage, LNG infrastructures and gas trade. Second, because gas transport network services, as line-pack storage, may also be competitive to the others unbundled flexibility tools. Therefore, network regulation needs to take into account the short and the long term impact of the rules incentives. Given that network development depends on expected flow requirements, strong change on gas demand and the consequent changes on gas flows must impact gas network operation. On the one hand, network development depends on expected flow requirements, and on the other, provisions of flexibility depend necessarily on the flexible use of network infrastructures. Hence, changes on gas demand increasing flexibility requirements and the consequent changes on gas flow must impact gas network operation and must impact the incentive on infrastructures investment.

The main idea of this thesis is to study three different issues, economic, political, or financial, related to three different public infrastructure sectors, transport, water and sewerage, and electricity, by using three different methodological approaches. In the first chapter, I make creative use of a non-parametric technique traditionally used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of similar firms, data envelopment analysis, to identify the most likely objective, economic vs. political, behind a specific policy. In the second chapter I empirically investigate the effects of the increasing private financial ownership of the water and sewerage utilities in England and Wales on key outcome variables such as leverage levels and consumer bills. Finally, in the third chapter, I evaluate an equity-aimed policy introduced in the electricity sector in Spain in 2009 by measuring the effect of its introduction on the probability of a household of being energy poor.Chapter One – Unbundling political and economic rationality: a non-parametric approach tested on transport infrastructure in SpainThis paper suggests a simple quantitative method to assess the extent to which public investment decisions are dominated by political or economic motivations. The true motivation can be identified by modeling each policy goal as the focus of the optimization anchoring a data envelopment analysis of the efficiency of the observed implementation. In other words, we rank performance based on how far observed behavior is under each possible goal, and the goal for which the distance is smaller reveals the specific motivation of the investment or any policy decision for that matter. Traditionally, data envelopment analysis is used to measure the relative efficiency of a set of firms having a similar productive structure. In this case, each firm corresponds to a different policy year, the policy being the determinant of the investment made.The approach is tested on Spain’s land transport infrastructure policy since it is argued by many observers to be driven more by political than economic concerns, resulting in a mismatch between capacity investment and traffic demand. History has shown that when the source of financing has been private, the network has been developed in areas with high demand, i.e. the Northern and Mediterranean corridors. When the source has been public, the network has been developed following a radial pattern, converging from a to Madrid. The method clearly shows that public investments in land transport infrastructure have generally been more consistent with a political objective – the centralization of economic power – than with an economic objective – maximizing mobility –.Chapter Two – On the effects of the private financial ownership of regulated utilities: lessons from the UK water sectorThis paper analyzes the quantitative impact of the growing role of non-traditional financial actors in the financing structure and consumer pricing of regulated private utilities. The focus is on the water sector in England and Wales, where the effect of the firms’ corporate financing and ownership strategies on key outcome variables may have been underestimated. The sector was privatized in 1989, year in which the 10 regional monopolies became 10 water and sewerage companies, listed and publicly traded on UK Stock Exchanges. Since then, six of the ten have been de-listed, bought-out by private equity – investment and infrastructure funds. I make use of this variation in ownership to measure the effect on leverage levels and consumer bills.I develop a theoretical framework allowing me to derive two hypotheses: first, the buyout of a company increases its leverage level, and second, the buyout of a company increases the consumer bill through higher leverage levels. The empirical analysis is based on two sequential steps: a staggered difference-in-differences estimation shows that private equity buyouts increase the leverage levels of water utilities. An instrumental variable and two-stage least squares estimation then show that these higher leverage levels increase the average consumer bills of bought-out utilities more than if they had not been bought-out. The estimated impact of the private equity buyouts in the sector in England and Wales on the annual average consumer bill ranges from 13.5 to 32.6 GBP, for a sample average bill of about 427 GBP.Chapter Three – Understanding the effectiveness of the electricity social rate in reducing energy poverty in SpainThis paper analyzes the causal impact of the introduction of a social subsidy, the bono social de electricidad, in Spain's electricity market in 2009. The measure was introduced following the surge in energy poverty, increasing particularly after the financial crisis. Using data from the family budget survey from 2006 to 2017, we evaluate the social policy in its fight against energy poverty.We proceed in two steps. First, we use a difference-in-differences approach to measure such a causal impact and to analyze how the introduction of the measure directly affected eligible households. We find that the introduction of the subsidy has reduced the likelihood of energy poverty for the eligible households. Therefore, the bono social de electricidad has reached its equity objective of increasing affordability of electricity. The second step aims at understanding how specifically the introduction of the subsidy affects consumers. We find that, in reaction to lower effective prices, households do not increase their consumption of electricity, resulting in lower total electricity expenditure. We are therefore able to show that this policy did not induce a change in the consumption behavior and that the increased affordability entirely resulted in a decrease of expenditure in electricity / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation seeks to contribute to the policy discussion on how to design efficient and sustainable energy policies. In three self-contained chapters, it applies microeconomic theory and empirical analysis to identify three market failures in European energy markets and to evaluate specific policy measures that strive to overcome these failures in order to increase market efficiency and to enhance environmental or societal sustainability. Chapter 1 and 2 study European electricity markets, which play an important role in the transition towards a carbon-neutral energy future. Overcoming barriers to efficient electricity markets is a crucial step to keep the costs of this transition as low as possible to society. Both chapters focus on obstacles to electricity market efficiency that have recently been highlighted by the European Commission. On the supply side, subsidies for renewable electricity may distort production incentives and competition in wholesale electricity markets. Chapter 1 applies a theoretical model to study the effect of different subsidies on producer strategies and competition in wholesale electricity markets. On the demand side, the European Commission seeks to overcome the reluctance of residential electricity consumers to switch electricity supplier in order to ensure effective competition in the retail electricity market. Chapter 2 empirically quantifies different reasons for switching inertia using a structural discrete choice model and performs counterfactual analysis to study the effect of different policy measures that seek to overcome switching inertia. Chapter 3 looks at the building sector, which accounts for 40% of final energy consumption in Europe and is a major emitter of carbon emissions. In the residential housing market information asymmetries hamper incentives to invest in energy efficiency improvements of rental property. This chapter empirically analyzes the effect of a European policy that mandates the use of energy performance certificates aiming at establishing an efficient market for energy efficient dwellings. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse porte sur les relations entre le Système Communautaire d'Échange de Quotas d'Émission (SCEQE) et les marchés de l'énergie. Une attention particulière est donnée au changement de combustible, le principal moyen de réduire les émissions de CO2 à court-terme dans le SCEQE. Cela consiste à substituer des centrales gaz aux centrales charbon dans la production d'électricité en dehors des heures de pointes. Ainsi, les centrales charbon fonctionnent sur de plus courtes périodes, ce qui permet de réduire les émissions de CO2. Le Chapitre 1 décrit différentes approches expliquant les relations entre les marchés de l'énergie et du CO2. Une revue de littérature est ensuite présentée. Nous donnons une description détaillée du processus de changement de combustible. En particulier, l'influence de l'efficacité des centrales est analysée. Le Chapitre 2 fournit une étude théorique de l'impact des différences d'efficacité parmi les centrales gaz pour le changement de combustible. Le principal résultat montre que la sensibilité du prix du CO2 vis-à-vis du prix du gaz dépend du niveau des émissions de CO2.Le Chapitre 3 examine les interactions entre les prix de l'électricité, du charbon, du gaz et du CO2 dans une étude empirique. Les résultats montrent une qu'il existe une relation significative entre le gaz et le CO2 à l'équilibre de long-terme. Le Chapitre 4 étudie le processus de découverte des informations qui influencent laformation des prix du gaz et du CO2. La forte relation entre le gaz et le CO2 indique que leurs prix sont affectés par les mêmes informations. Nous montrons dans une étude empirique que le marché du CO2 domine le processus de découverte de ces informations. / This thesis investigates relationships between the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and energy markets. A special focus is given to fuel switching, the main shortterm abatement measure within the EU ETS. This consists in substituting Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGTs) for hard-coal plants in off-peak power generation. Thereby coal plants run for shorter periods, which allows power producers to reduce their CO2 emissions. In Chapter 1, we outline different approaches explaining relationships between carbon and energy markets. We also review the literature relating to these issues. Next, we further describe the fuel switching process and, in particular, we analyze the influence of energy and environmental efficiency of thermal power plants (coal and gas) on fuel switching. In Chapter 2, we provide a theoretical analysis that shows how differences in the efficiency of CCGTs can rule interactions between gas and carbon prices. The main result shows that the allowance price becomes more sensitive to the gas price when the level of CO2 emissions increases. In Chapter 3, we examine interactions between carbon, coal, gas and electricity prices in an empirical study. Among the main results, we find that there is a significant link between carbon and gas prices in the long-run equilibrium.In Chapter 4, we analyze the cross-market price discovery process between gas and CO2 markets. We identified in previous chapters that there is a robust significant link between gas and CO2 markets. They are linked commodities, and their prices are affected by the same information. In an empirical analysis, we find that the carbon market is the leader in cross-market price discovery process.