Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 150-165.

Domestic demand for petroleum coupled with rising world oil prices have become burden to the Thai government.  One idea is a legislative solution which requires modifying and updating petroleum law. A condition a petroleum law must meet to maximise state revenue is that the law must provide tools for handling exceptional cases, e.g. production from large and small fields, because the contract pattern contains the general assumption that large fields are profitable.  Sliding scale royalties and income tax, as well as a windfall profit (the Special Remuneratory Benefit) are suited to generating maximum state revenue and are fair to international oil companies upon consideration of the field sizes and frontiers.  But what should the rate be? The proposed fiscal incentive options aim to lower the economic cut-off thereby increasing the cumulative reserves which can be economically produced.  Some provisions of the existing petroleum law and concession contract which should be made for amendment at the first stage are submitted in this thesis. As for Thailand as an oil importing country, factors other than fiscal aspects need to be considered, for example, issue of a maritime area subjected to overlapping claimed by Thailand and its neighbours.  Action should be taken to resolve a state of uncertainty for interested oil companies. The issue of company size is also important as it is involved in marginal fields.  A large oil company would prefer to transfer its right of a marginal field or declining field to another smaller company. Developing a marginal field depends on a mixture of technical, commercial and regulatory issues.  Smaller sized companies appear to have more flexible work arrangements.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering, 2016 / The sulfur removal methods from petroleum products have become an important research topic. Sulfur poisons the catalysts found in vehicles engines and it is also a major air pollutant (Nehlsen, 2005). Recent sulfur specifications require refineries to produce ultra-clean products (Ma et al., 2002). This work aims at exploring a batch adsorptive desulfurization technique using a polymer-supported imidation agent (PI) as an adsorbent. The test was carried out at atmospheric pressure and on two commercial diesel fuels with sulfur contents of 5200 (Case 1) and 670 (Case 2) mg/kg which resembles the feed and outlet streams from the hydrodesulfurization (HDS) reactor respectively. The adsorbent was synthesized according to the procedure described by Shiraishi et al. (2003), BET, FTIR, SEM equipped with EDS and TGA were used for charaterization of the adsorbent. The PI was successfully synthesized and its surface area was 0.5333 m2/g which was incredibly lower than that of the PI synthesized by Fadhel (2010). Hence carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were added to the solution with the aim of improving the sulfur removal efficiency of PI. The obtained results indicated that PI with CNTs yield better results than PI without CNTs. In overall, the lowest sulfur content of 3462 mg/kg (33% removal efficiency) and 26 mg/kg (96% removal efficiency) for Case 1 and Case 2 respectively were obtained. Furthermore, the adsorbents were most effective at lower mixing rates (150 – 400 rpm), longer contact time (30 – 40 hours), practically high adsorbent amount (1 g) and moderate lower temperatures (25 – 50 ºC). The Freundlich adsorption isotherm model was the best fit to the experimental data in both Case 1 and Case 2. The kinetic model that best fitted well the experimental data is the pseudo-second-order model for both Case 1 and Case 2. The kinetic rate constant for Case 2 (4.079 x 10-3g/mg.min) was greater than that for Case 1 (6.75 x 10-5g/mg.min) thus indicating that fuel with low sulfur content has a higher sorption uptake than fuel with high sulfur content. Based on the results obtained in this study, it is suggested that the adsorption of sulfur at high sulfur content fuel is not capable to be used as a complimentary method to the HDS process. On the other hand, at low sulfur content fuel, there is an opportunity for combining this method with the traditional HDS method to achieve ultra-clean fuel. / GR2016

M.A. dissertation, University of Hong Kong, 1976.

Thesis (M.A. in anthropology)--Washington State University. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1976. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 213-230).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Duke University, 1993. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-111).

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 2003. / Title from title page screen, viewed November 15, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Mohammad Tavakoli Targhi (chair), Lawrence McBride, Hassan Mohammadi, Paul Holsinger, Tony Adedze. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-119) and abstract. Also available in print.

In the last decade or so political scientists have found the pluralist and marxist theoretical perspectives wanting for their inadequate attention to the causal role of states. In response, a burgeoning international literature has emerged which sets out to develop a state-centred theoretical perspective. This study is deeply informed by the emerging statist theoretical perspective. This thesis explores the relative capacity of the federal state to increase its autonomy in relation to the powerful oil MNCs in the period 1973-84 through an expanded federal presence in the energy sector. Whereas many scholars have assumed that a positive relationship existed between state capacity and the effectiveness of state intervention, Evans and Ikenberry for instance argue that an almost inverse relationship exists between the magnitude of intervention and its effectiveness. In Canada the literature on federalism has long been cognizant of the important role of states. This thesis therefore attempts to fuse the two bodies of literature, namely statism and federalism, in order to shed added light on the development of federal oil policy during 1973-84. The fact that the Canadian state is federal accounts for the recurring tendency for the energy issue to be redefined from its "obvious" focus on state-oil industry relations to intrastate issues (federal-provincial relations). A major contribution of this thesis is to explore the circumstances in which jurisdictional concerns deflect attention from policy substance - and also to those in which the reverse occurs. The thesis finds that when one level of government sought to become more independent of dominant societal actors, such as the oil industry, the intervention, whether so intended or not, was redefined to follow intergovernmental lines of conflict, rather than state-society lines of conflict. The nature of the issues also changed as distributional problems became subsumed under and were driven by the jurisdictional concerns of governments. This increased the policy interdependence between the two levels of government, squeezed out industry interests from intergovernmental deliberations, and generated intervention aimed directly at curtailing the power of the other level of government. This intervention which at first rendered the aggregate state less dependent on the oil industry by for example the creation of Petro-Canada, and later by the NEP, ultimately backfired on the state, at both levels. Important world oil market changes, intergovernmental conflicts and stalemates, deteriorating economic performance, industry reactions, and other mounting economic and political problems undermined the federal government's intervention and led to concessions for the industry. Such concessions were therefore the product of an increasingly irrelevant regulatory framework rather than purely a reflection of the power of the oil industry as such. This thesis confirms in general terms Ikenberry's finding that an inverse relationship exists between the degree and magnitude of intervention and its effectiveness. Evans and Ikenberry see this most clearly in relation to NOCs, that is in their propensity to evade state control schemes and to undermine centralized state control. In Canada the opposite change.exacerbated conflicts, namely the efforts by governments to shore up their capabilities as corporate actors and the emergence of "political federalism" which saw decision-making becoming centralized within each government, in the hands of decision-makers with jurisdiction-wide concerns. The ensuing process of intrajurisdictional policy coordination not only exacerbated conflicts but also oriented the emerging policy instruments along intergovernmental lines. Another contributing factor was the learning process that decision-makers underwent in the intergovernmental arena. In addition, 'policy mobilization' in the NEP served to link Petro-Canada closer to the political objectives of federal elites. Therefore, while the effects are the same in Canada, the process is almost the reverse of the one described by Evans and Ikenberry. Evans and Ikenberry see ineffective state intervention largely as the product of state actors mobilizing societal actors and state and societal actors becoming more closely linked. This study supplements the statist literature by noting that the attempts of a number of interventionist governmental actors to introduce comprehensive and more independent interventionist strategies heightened conflicts, generated inefficiencies and essentially caused the intervention to fail. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate