Journal articles on the topic 'Zambia National Oil Company Limited'

Zambia is today 90% hydropower dependent, but this may change because Zambia and the World at large are today facing a changing climate that affects the ecosystem, rain patterns, and spurs drought which reduces the production of hydropower. The current power deficit experienced in Zambia points to a need to deploy a renewable energy generation-mix strategy. This study conducts a solar photovoltaic performance and financial analysis for grid-connected homes in Zambia to investigate the role of solar energy as an enabler for energy security in Zambia using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) System Advisor Model (SAM) simulation method. It further reviews the available solar irradiance, modeling a detailed grid-connected photovoltaic system using locally available products for a single owner in a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Zambia Electricity Company Limited (ZESCO). This model would alleviate the current power load shedding experienced by the residential sector, of up to 22 hours of no electricity out of 24 hours in a day. Alongside the technical performance model and an unfavorable business climate in Zambia, a financial model is also developed to help assess project feasibility and financial viability. A 1 kW solar PV system was modeled at an installation cost of US$1.27 per watt on a short-term basis of 5 years and found that the project is feasible with a 28.52% IRR achieved in 3 years and a 69% performance ratio and a debt service coverage ratio (DSCR) of 5.12 by the end of the project life, thereby indicating capability to turn around Zambia’s energy poverty to meet the UN SDG 7.

Global workplaces and multinational organizations in the oil and gas industry have created an environment in which human factors/ergonomics professionals collaborate to solve office ergonomics and process control design problems for clients. The demand for ergonomics expertise is growing, but the supply of certified ergonomists is limited. The situation is acute in Southeast Asia (SEA), given the lack of ergonomics awareness, training, and certification. We present three challenges that required ergonomics interventions and collaboration among ergonomists. Two of the projects involved multinational companies operating in SEA and one, a national company with global operations.

As it is known, oil is one of the most important economic resources in Iraq, therefore the oil policy is the cornerstone for the investment of this vital resource, where it contributes to the revenues of the Iraqi budget were more than 90%. Since the discovery of Baba Gharghar field in Kirkuk at the beginning of the twentieth century, the retreat of the Ottoman Empire authority, the British occupation of Iraq began, and after Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, the right of exploration and exploitation of oil became for the British with 25% as a share for the French, so Iraqi oil was monopolized by the Iraqi Oil Company (IPC), under the concession agreement granted since 1928. The British and French monopoly companies exploited oil and extracted in large quantities and randomly to increase profits with a small share for the country which owns the resources. This resulted in the issue of Act No.80 for 1961 in the Republican era, which enabled Iraq to recover 99% of the land that was under the control of foreign companies. The National Oil Company was established under Act. No. 11 for 1964, and in the 1970s the operations of Iraq Oil Company Limited were nationalized, giving the National Oil Company the opportunity to explore, exploit and produce oil. In fact, nationalization constituted a significant qualitative leap in terms of increasing oil revenues, in addition to the prosperity and development, especially after the rise of oil prices in the seventies. But after 1980 and the entry of Iraq in fruitless wars, reflected on the nationalization achievements; production of oil declined significantly, especially after 1990 and the invasion of Kuwait till the occupation of Iraq in 2003, which led to the looting of oil fields and the destruction of some of them, therefore the oil sector was in a serious situation, prompting the operators in this sector in 2009 to resort to rounds of licenses to reinvest investment and production in this sector, in fact this option is a justification for the advancement of the Iraqi oil sector at present, but it is no longer the best option to promote it.

The study focused on analysing the effectiveness of service delivery in fast moving goods supply chains taking Brands Africa as a case study. Some observed supply chain related challenges of Brands Africa that included lower sales volume, high volume of product returns, sale of some expired products out of stock of some product lines and high prices of some merchandise made the study to be mandatory. A pragmatic research paradigm was used in collecting data from a cross-sectional survey sample of 87 respondents and a case study sample of 5 research participants using a survey questionnaire and an in-depth interview guide as research instruments, respectively. The study concluded that supplier contact was strongest on communication with suppliers, importing goods to Zambia and good relationships with suppliers. The study showed Brands Africa had good advertising and merchandising services, and effective marketing research activities in its supply chains The study established that quality of merchandise high, and market image and reputation of Brands Africa was high, and that inventory management, price of merchandise and efficiency of supply chains needed improvement. The study also concluded that there is a significant relationship between supplier contact and marketing contact activities of Brands Africa with the overall satisfaction of its stakeholders. The research recommends Brands Africa to upgrade its product, financial, information and social with its suppliers, transporters, wholesalers and retailers. The study will also guide managers on cost cutting ways, quality management, ensuring efficient operations and maintaining positive image of Brands Africa. The study recommended Brands Africa’s on policy issues like quality of merchandise, quantity of merchandise, price range of merchandise, delivery schedules and communication systems will be improved. The researcher recommends another research to be carried out at national level covering supply chain of other fast-moving consumer goods companies and also considering more independent variables.

The increasing role of transport communications’ constructive improvement in the Black Sea region’s real economy development is inextricably linked with the need to ensure it by hydrocarbon exports’ infrastructure under the conditions of limited international cooperation and differentiation of services provided. In this paper have been marked groups of problems characterizing factors of demand creation for energy resources in modern world economy, has been revealed the Black Sea economic cooperation role in development of oil and petroleum products’ export infrastructure, has been assessed the energy policy influence on the Russian Federation´s position at the global energy market. A development strategy of vertically integrated oil company "Rosneft" at the national and international markets has been described, Russian vertically integrated oil companies’ competitive advantages and weaknesses have been considered.

ABSTRACT There are always lessons to be learnt from every oil spill response. Similarly, critics are always quick to point out how a response was too slow, the inadequacy of equipment / manpower resources and, inevitably, how the response lacks proper coordination. Yet many of these common criticisms can be resolved if artificial ‘roadblocks and red tape’ are removed so that Responders can go about doing their jobs, providing prompt responses in mitigating damages caused by oil spills. This paper will discuss the challenges of mounting an international oil spill response in the Asia Pacific with specific references to political roadblocks and red tape put up by ‘recipient’ countries. Tier 3 Oil Spill Response organizations, namely Oil Spill Response and East Asia Response Limited (OSRL/EARL), regularly practices activations and resource deployments through exercises with different scenarios. These exercises can take the form of tabletop exercises or full scale deployment of equipment, recall of Members’ regional and worldwide teams. The larger scale exercises involve trans-boundary movement of people and equipment, including boats and aircrafts. OSRL/EARL has conducted large scale exercises successfully. Unfortunately, there are also times when red tape prevented the company from responding in the swift and efficient manner that it endeavors. Various reasons given are ‘national security’ and the need for very ‘high level approvals’ as the recipient country will be deemed to be calling outside assistance for a national incident. The paper will discuss some of OSRL/EARL'S experiences like:Response organizations refusing to participate in exercises due to ‘national security’ reasonsNational agencies refusing import of equipment due to taxation lawsProtracted approval processes, and sometimes outright refusal, for materials like dispersantRefusing entry of international aircraftsClearance and complicated permit requirements for Responders entering a country to assist in the response The challenge to remove these road blocks is an uphill task. OSRL/EARL has an on-going Advocacy program to engage and cooperate on these issues with Government Agencies and relevant bodies. The Author believes that the removal of ‘road blocks’ will expedite responses to oil spills.

Nigeria is a middle income country whose economy depends largely on crude and refined oil from its natural environment. A larger percentage of Nigeria economy survives mainly on the incomes from oil production. Over the years, there is recurrent dwindling oil revenue orchestrated by oil pipelines vandalism and oil theft in the environment. This is predominant in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. This menace has wreaked havoc on the Nigeria’s economy. Currently, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) claims the losses of 470,000 barrels per day of crude oil amounting to $700 million monthly due to oil theft. The disquiets of these menaces in the environment, which have posed serious threat to Nigeria’s economy, are addressed in this paper. This paper employed the doctrinal legal research methodology in evaluating the recurrent oil pipelines vandalism and oil theft causing a devastating economic meltdown. On this premise, this paper finds that persistent loss of barrels of crude oil and degradation of the environment are due to the lack of adequate security measures and proper enforcement of Oil Pipelines Act together with other relevant environmental laws. Based on the findings, this paper recommends a review of the Oil Pipelines Act, the establishment of a strong environmental security surveillance, and creation of a special court for accelerated prosecution of vandals. It concludes that this will mitigate the alarming economic meltdown of the Nigeria’s economy and promote a sustainable serene environment.

About four centuries passed between the first appearance of pamphlets in which the medical uses of petroleum were discussed (for example, the Tegernsee (southern Bavaria, 1430), Geneva (Swiss Confederacy, 1480), Nurnberg (northern Bavaria, 1500), and the Antwerp (Duchy of Brabant, today Flanders, 1540–1550) pamphlets), and Michael Faraday's discovery in 1825 of the chemical composition of benzene derived from bituminous oil as a compound of carbon and hydrogen. During this long time span, studies of oil, carried out between alchemy and chemistry, benefited from rapid advances and brilliant insights, much as they had moments of stagnation, and disappointing regressions. In 1855 the chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr., of Yale University, proved that crude oil could be decomposed through a process of fractional distillation into a range of fuels and lubricants cheaper than the oils, greases and waxes rendered by animal fats and vegetal matter (Silliman 1855; Forbes 1948 Forbes 1958). In the course of the early 1860s, oil became the main source of illumination first in North America, then in Europe and Australia. This transformation of oil from a substance of limited use into a commodity of mass consumption radically changed the pattern of oil finding and production. Crude was no longer collected just from natural springs or draining seepages, but was pumped out of the ground from wells drilled by machines using steam power. This was the first step toward the modern oil industry, and a breakthrough in the history of energy: the beginning of an oil society. The first part of this article provides an introduction to the early uses and production of petroleum in Europe, and advances in understanding the nature, the physical properties, and the composition of hydrocarbons. It provides a brief analysis of the interaction between technology, society and the environmental context in northwestern Pennsylvania, where, between 1858 and 1859, a new successful pattern developed to produce oil in commercial quantity. From 1861, that innovative process put the United States in the position to gain increasing shares in the young European mineral oil markets and, subsequently, to jeopardize the position of local oil (vegetal, animal and mineral) producers. The second part, using a national case study approach, explores the history of a British oil company operating in Romania since 1863, the Wallachian Oil Company. This venture by London stockholders—short, difficult, and abortive—is a mirror of the nature of the business implemented by emerging oil companies, not only from Europe, and therefore exemplifies the challenges of setting the modern oil sector in motion in the nineteenth century.

ABSTRACT The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) conducted the largest full deployment oil spill exercise ever held in the Arabian Gulf on October 4, 1999. Code-named EXERCISE GHAZAL, it took the form of an incident management exercise, lasting one long day of approximately 10–14 hours. This exercise required significant planning In terms of availability of personnel, development of an appropriate scenario and arranging for the physical and logistic requirements of such an exercise. Industry participants included the ADNOC Crisis Management Team, the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company's Emergency Response Team, BP Amoco as the vessel and cargo owner, government/industry liaison, and press/media. ADNOC activated regional and international oil spill response equipment and personnel, including the equipment stockpile of the Petroleum Association of Japan and Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) in the United Kingdom. Local aviation assets activated for simulated aerial spraying of dispersant were augmented by deployment of the OSRL Hercules aircraft and ADDS pack dispersant spray system from Southampton, United Kingdom. Another major accomplishment of EXERCISE GHAZAL was the full participation and integration for the first time of local and national government agencies into a major Incident response. Included in the planning and execution of EXERCISE GHAZAL were the Federal Environmental Agency, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Frontier and Coast Guard, Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency, Civil Defense, the Ministries of Health and Communication, the General Civil Aviation Authority, and others. The exercise received extensive local, regional, and international media coverage. Following the completion of EXERCISE GHAZAL, an immediate “hotwash” debriefing of all participants was conducted, followed by a more formal, comprehensive debriefing of the major participants. These sessions generated key lessons learned and led to the development of a Five-Point Action Plan to improve the ability of the United Arab Emirates to respond to a major oil spill, the primary point being the development of a National Oil Spill Contingency Plan.

AbstractIn 1964, the newly established Hong Kong-based Cha Group partnered with the Northern Nigerian Regional Development Corporation to open the United Nigerian Textiles Limited (UNTL) mill in Kaduna – the largest textile mill in Northern Nigeria. The Cha Group later expanded, building textile mills in other parts of the country. Both Chinese and Nigerian managers and workers were involved in UNTL mills, which by 1980 provided printed cotton textiles for the Nigerian market and for other markets in West Africa. Yet this Chinese–Nigeria collaboration could not overcome factors external to the textile-manufacturing industry. Declining infrastructure, erratic electricity, frequent changes in political leadership at the federal level, and the smuggling of less-costly imported textiles (often from China) undermined local textile manufacturing, while inflationary pressures associated with the national oil industry undermined agricultural production, exacerbating the difficulties of obtaining raw Nigerian cotton. In 2007, the UNTL mill in Kaduna closed, although it resumed production in December 2010, assisted by the 100 billion naira Cotton, Textile and Garment Development Fund. Cha Group officials also used their knowledge of the Nigerian textile market as the basis for the marketing of branded, high-quality manufactured textiles, known as Da Viva®, at company-franchised shops in major Nigerian cities. The Cha Group took advantage of digital innovation, both in the printing of these popular textiles and also by advertising them on an attractive website. This article considers the ways in which the United Nigerian Textiles Plc company has maintained production of grey cloth and printed textiles at its mills in Kaduna and Ikorodu-Lagos, along with the marketing of Da Viva® cotton prints, which suggests the continuing, if contradictory, possibilities for this Nigerian–Chinese textile-manufacturing collaboration.

ABSTRACT Finland's National Board of Waters and the Environment (FNBWE) and the Finnish electronics company Jertec Oy have together developed a computer-based oil recovery system to improve the efficiency of oil recovery operations in the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is extremely vulnerable to oil spills, largely because at high latitudes there are only a few hours of daylight during winter. Integration of the ship's navigational equipment with a highly accurate positioning system such as the differential GPS makes it possible to operate 24 hours a day. Also, oil recovery can be made much more efficient by using a new technique to collect oil from a wider area than at present. The oil recovery vessel Halli has a length of 60 meters and is capable of recovering oil either alone or with two assisting vessels. In the latter case, the assisting vessels draw oil booms to direct floating oil from a wide area into the Halli rather like a funnel. Previously, this operation was limited to straight runs and daylight hours. The Halli is also equipped to perform underwater investigations (such as seabed wrecks) with a small submersible. Without an underwater positioning and tracking system, underwater operations are inefficient. The main requirements for the new system were reliable positioning of all vessels (assisting vessels are not known in advance), reliable inter-vessel communication, and documentation and printouts of the planned and real routes. The new navigation system was installed in November 1991 and has since fulfilled all FNBWE's requirements. The main benefit is the capability to operate 24 hours a day, which greatly increases the efficiency of oil recovery.

Energi Mega Persada (EMP) Bentu Ltd is a national oil and gas company that operates the Bentu Block located in Riau Province. The increasing number of EMP Bentu Ltd consumers is directly proportional to the increasing number of gas wells, which causes EMP Bentu Ltd to often come into conflict with the community around the well. This study aims to determine the implementation of excellence public relations in conflict management by Public Relations Energi Mega Persada Bentu Limited in Muara Sakal District. Pelalawan 2019 through conflict management in carrying out the direction of communication, maintaining a balance of interests, running communication channels and considering the level of ethnicity. This study used qualitative research methods. Determination of informants using snowball sampling technique with 3 (three) informants at EMP Bentu Ltd and 7 (seven) people involved in Focus Group Discussion (FGP) in Muara Sakal Hamlet. The results of this study indicate PR EMP Bentu Ltd in managing conflict in Muara Sakal implements public relations excellence put forward by James E. Grunig and Hunt through implementation in carrying out the direction of conflict communication, maintaining a balance of interests, running communication channels and considering the level of ethnicity through conflict management. . Although unable to apply the 10 principles of excellent PR perfectly due to overlapping division of tasks, the conflict management in Muara Sakal Hamlet can be resolved.

Despite possessing some of the world’s largest shale-gas resources, China is likely in 2020 to have produced less than half of the 30 Bcm per year in shale gas that the government set as a goal in its latest Five-Year Plan. While such a small volume may make shale production seem inconsequential to China’s overall energy balance, it is clear that when it comes to developing unconventional hydrocarbons, China is playing a long game. With regard to shale alone, a 2013 US Energy Information Administration study noted that China has the world’s second-largest technically recoverable shale-gas resources at an estimated 1,115 Tcf; the US is first with 1,161 Tcf. Even more to the point, China is one of only four countries (including the US, Canada, and Argentina) that produce commercial volumes of both shale gas and of tight oil. But it is the lack of efficient technologies and infrastructure that stand in the way of China besting the US and creating its own “shale revolution.” China’s most attractive reserves occur in remote, mountainous areas where, in some cases, shale resources can lie as deep as 3500 m. In separate papers presented in October during the 2020 SPE Russian Petroleum Technology Conference, the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) detailed new technologies it is applying to meet some of these challenges. Paper SPE 202066, coauthored by subsidiaries of CNPC, Downhole Service Company and CCDC Petroleum Drilling & Technology Company Ltd., details the application of enhanced-hydraulic- fracturing technology (EHFT) to raise the effective stimulated reservoir volume (SRV) in the Sichuan shale basin. A second paper (SPE 202062), coauthored by CNPC and Halliburton, offers a case study in tight-oil production in Daqing employing an intensive fracture-cluster-completion strategy using a microemulsion flowback technology. The Spice in Sichuan Shale China boasts three shale basins (Sichuan, Tarim, and Yantze), but its principal development focus is in the southwestern province of Sichuan, which holds half of the country’s shale reserves. In developing fields such as Weiyuan, Changning, and Jiaoshiba, producers target the Ordovician Wufeng-Silurian Longmaxi formation. The total proved geological reserves of these three gas fields exceeds 500 Bcm, the authors noted in their paper. To develop infrastructure supporting industrial-scale operations and to introduce and test new technologies to raise shale output, China has established several national pilot demonstration areas. One of those is the Weiyuan national shale demonstration area in south Sichuan, where the authors quote an annual production of 2.5 Bcm. Staged horizontal fracturing is the main technology used at Weiyuan and other Chinese shale fields as producers strive to expand the fracture extension area, increase the reconstruction volume, and improve the productivity of single wells. An analysis of production data from Weiyuan showed, however, that the long-term conductivity of fractures is limited because the length and height of supporting fractures are short. Thus, because of the limited volume of reconstruction, production decreases rapidly and efficiency suffers as pressure declines.

The upstream oil and gas industry is diverse and many of the assets are geographically dispersed in offshore and onshore locations. The first year of National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) in the 2009 financial year (FY09) challenged the industry to come to terms with complex issues such as the reporting structure, defining facilities, determining appropriate reporting methodologies, determining incidental emissions, obtaining contractor emissions and considering uncertainty estimates. This paper will explore the range of industry responses during FY09 and will be accompanied by a case study from Santos Limited to illustrate the journey. In responding to NGER requirements in FY09, the oil and gas industry was required to absorb many new legislative compliance obligations. At a company level, difficult decisions had to be made about the allocation of resourcing for NGER preparation and response. Companies were also faced with financial implications of the reported data, because that data would underpin permit liability under the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). Going forward, a key optimisation challenge for FY10 and beyond is the management and use of the NGER data. This paper will cover the processes and systems used to collect and report data and how the use of that data for organisational decision making will all be an important optimisation consideration in a CPRS environment. The paper will also explore other NGER reporting issues for the oil and gas industry, such as: arrangements with stakeholders, such as joint venture parties, partners and contractors; selection of measurement methods, including complexities with venting, flaring and other fugitive emissions; availability of appropriate measurement equipment; issues with reporting of own-use emissions and intermediate energy use and production; and, measurement of exploration activities. These issues are likely to present an optimisation challenge to many in the industry during FY10 and beyond. The paper will then conclude with a case study by Santos Limited.

A universal benefit of incorporation is the separate entity doctrine which shields the shareholders, directors and other operators from liability for corporate omissions. By the doctrine, the company’s debts are limited to the amount shareholders have paid or have agreed to pay to the company for its shares, in case of insolvency. Consequently, their other assets, homes, pension funds, cars, yachts, private jets will remain untouched. In response to the doctrine, the law has devised various safety nets to protect creditors through company laws, insolvency laws, general anti-corruption enactments, public policy initiatives and judicial interventions. Inevitably, there has been a vast ocean of controversies as to when and why a court will pierce the veil of incorporation to hold the shareholders and directors liable beyond their unpaid equity obligations. The reasons for the controversies are myriad as values of the society change, and as new business risks emerge in retail businesses, telecommunications, oil and gas, real estate, banking, tax regimes and finance. This paper attempts to stream line the underlining principles adopted by common law, case law and statutes to pierce the veil of incorporation like where the company is a façade, a sham, an alter ego, a puppet for crime as well as issues of public policy, environmental responsibilities and national security. Statutory provisions on lifting the corporate veil have also been provided. Thus, a bold attempt has been made to provide a clear and general compass for all jurisdictions as to when courts will pierce the corporate veil to guide judges, legislatures, corporate managers, law students etc.

The study's objectives were to evaluate the level of variability in community people's awareness and knowledge of Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL) Regional Development Councils (RDCs) and Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) Shell Cluster Development Boards (CDBs) and to determine whether the ascertained community people's awareness and knowledge have a significant impact on how well Multi-National Oil Corporations (MNOCs) development programmes are carried out in the host communities. Adopting the cross-sectional research design, the study surveyed 400 respondents from selected four states in the Niger Delta Oil Producing communities where RDCs and CDBs are operated. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, means, and percentages were used to describe the socio-demographic information and the research questions. Inferential statistical tools like the One-Way Analysis of Variance and regression analysis had been used to take a look at the formulated hypotheses for the study. The findings indicate no relevant difference among community people in their state of awareness of the RDCs and CDBs but that the host community’s people poor involvement in the RDCs and CDBs resulted from inadequate requisite knowledge of the activities of MNOCs in their communities. The study recommended that every decision-making and taking process involve in project initiation, execution and implementation should involve the host communities in order to earn the people’s trust and respect.

This paper introduces testing system of submersible motor that used for oil field based on virtual instruments. The system can detect, analyze, process and acquire data by national instruments’ graphical programming 1anguage，LabVIEW and DAQ board. It has a perfect man-machine interface. Because of its successful application in factory, work efficiency is improved greatly. IntroductionSubmersible motor is the power component of the submersible which performance affects the normal operation of the whole unit. With the development of production, varieties and yield of the machine are increasing and routine testing work is also increasing, but the test means has lagged behind. At present, the testing technology of submersible motor has been perfect in foreign, and able to provide the accurate performance curves to the user at the same time, At home, the dynamometer test of submersible motor is limited to some basic parameters measurement, and can not map the five characteristic curves of the motor accurately. Therefore, developing a set of rodless pump dynamometer system is necessary. The system is based on the NI company Labview software development platform and hardware platform, it can test automation and draw submersible motor performance curve accurately.

CNOOC Turns On the Taps at Two Bohai Sea Fields Production has begun at CNOOC Limited’s Luda 6-2 and Bozhong 26-3 oil field expansion in the Bohai Sea. Luda 6-2 is flowing ahead of schedule, utilizing existing processing facilities of the Suizhong 36-1 oil field. The project has built a new central platform. A total of 38 development wells are planned, including 29 production wells, eight water-injection wells, and one development-and-appraisal well. The project is expected to reach peak production of around 10,000 B/D in 2022. The Bozhong 26-3 oilfield expansion project has also come online. In addition to fully utilizing existing processing facilities, new unmanned wellhead and power platforms were built for the project. A total of eight development wells are planned, including five production wells, two water-injection wells, and one development-and-appraisal well. The project is expected to reach peak production of 2,670 B/D in 2021. CNOOC Limited holds 100% interest in both projects. PPL Awarded Abu Dhabi Offshore Exploration Block A consortium of four Pakistani companies led by Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) was awarded the exploration rights for Offshore Block 5 in Abu Dhabi’s second competitive block bid round. The award marks the first Pakistani company investment in and planned exploration for oil and gas in an Abu Dhabi concession as well as the first partnership between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Pakistani energy companies. Other companies in the consortium include Mari Petroleum Company Limited, Oil and Gas Development Company Limited, and Government Holdings (Private) Limited. Under the terms of the agreement, the consortium will hold a 100% stake in the exploration phase, investing up to $304.7 million toward exploration and appraisal drilling, including a participation fee, to explore for and appraise oil and gas opportunities in the block that covers an offshore area of 6223 km2 and is located 100 km northeast of Abu Dhabi. “The PPL-led consortium is delighted to be selected for the concession award of Abu Dhabi’s Offshore Block 5,” said Moin Raza Khan, managing director and chief executive of PPL. “This award is not only a watershed moment for Pakistan and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi towards bilateral energy cooperation and economic links, but also offers an opportunity to strengthen strategic cooperation with ADNOC to share technical know-how and expertise.” Following a successful commercial discovery during the exploration phase, the consortium will have a production concession to develop and produce the discoveries. ADNOC has the option to hold a 60% stake in the production phase, which is 35 years from the commencement of the exploration phase. The block offers the potential to create significant in-country value for the UAE over the lifetime of the concession. In addition to drilling exploration and appraisal wells, the exploration phase will see the consortium leverage and contribute financially and technically to ADNOC’s mega seismic survey, which is acquiring 3D seismic data within the block area. The data already acquired over a large part of the block, combined with its proximity to existing oil and gas fields, suggest the concession area has promising potential. Hess Exits Denmark Upstream Hess Corporation has completed the previously announced sale of its subsidiary Hess Denmark ApS, which holds a 61.5% interest in the South Arne Field, to Ineos E&P AS for a total consideration of $150 million. “The sale of our Denmark asset enables us to further focus our portfolio and strengthen our cash and liquidity position,” said John Hess, chief executive of Hess. “Proceeds will be used to fund our world-class investment opportunity in Guyana.” The transaction was effective 1 January 2021. Beacon Offshore Secures Drillship for Shenandoah Work Beacon Offshore awarded Transocean a $252-million contract for use of its newbuild ultradeepwater drillship Deepwater Atlas to work in the Shenandoah field in the US Gulf of Mexico (GOM). The deal also includes a $30-million mobilization fee from Southeast Asia to the GOM. The Shenandoah program comprises two phases. Once delivered from the shipyard, the Deepwater Atlas is expected to begin operations in Q3 2022, initially using dual blowout preventers (BOP) rated to 15,000 psi. The duration of the drilling program is approximately 255 days and should result in $80 million in contract drilling revenue. Upon completion of initial drilling, a 20,000-psi BOP will be installed on the rig, making it Transocean’s second asset with a 20,000-psi-rated well-control system. The BOP installation and commissioning is expected to last 45 to 60 days, contributing $17 million in revenue. Following the 20,000-psi BOP installation, the Deepwater Atlas will begin the well completion program. The approximate duration of this phase is 275 days and should contribute $125 million in contract drilling revenue. Gambia Block Back on the Market The A1 block offshore Gambia is available for licensing again following a $29.3-million settlement with BP for failing to meet its drilling obligations there, according to the Gambian government. The oil major failed to drill a well before the initial exploration period expired on 29 July. “The A1 Block will revert to the government, free of all encumbrances,” the government statement said. “With BP’s exit, the A1 Block will now be on the market for licensing.” BP was awarded the block’s exploration rights in 2019. Brazil’s 3R Petroleum Negotiating Potiguar Purchase Petrobras is in talks with 3R Petroleum to sell a group of assets in the Potiguar basin for more than $1 billion. In a recent securities filing, Petrobras revealed that 3R presented the best offer in public bidding for the assets in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, known collectively as Polo Potiguar. The assets include 23,000 B/D of onshore and shallow-water oil production, according to 2020 bidding documents. It also includes the Potiguar Clara Camarao Refinery, which has installed capacity of 39,600 B/D. For 3R, the acquisition would more than double the company’s oil production and launch it into the top tier of Brazil’s independent producers, along with Enauta Participacoes and PetroRio. A successful sale would eliminate a noncore asset for Petrobras in a bid to reduce debt and focus on deepwater oil production. Petrobras Spuds Aram Block Wildcat Petrobras has started drilling a wildcat well in the Aram block of the pre-salt of the Santos Basin using Constellation drillship Brava Star, according to the National Petroleum Agency (ANP). The Aram block is operated by Petrobras (80%) in partnership with CNODC, a unit of China National Petroleum Corp. (20%). The two com­panies purchased the area in the only bid of the 6th Pre-­Salt Round in 2019. They paid $1.24 billion in signature bonuses and the minimum allowed profit oil of 29.96%. Drilling at Aram began on 24 August. With the new Petrobras well, Brazil returned to record levels in exploratory activity seen only in the pre­-pandemic period. In all, five wells were drilled in the country during August—the highest number in a single month since May 2019. DNO Begins Drilling at Gomez DNO has kicked off an exploration well at its Gomez prospect on PL006C license offshore Norway. The probe will be drilled to a depth of around 3300 m below sea level, targeting Paleocene-­age formations. DNO Norge AS holds a 65% operated interest in the license; Aker BP holds the balance. Aker BP originally had a 15% interest but recently acquired another 20% interest in PL006C from DNO under a swap agreement in which DNO picked up a 25% participating interest in PL1085 (Tanumåsen) and increased its share from 20 to 30% in PL906 (Mugnetind). The swap, pending government approval, will diversify Aker’s position in the southern North Sea. The Gomez well is being drilled using the Borgland Dolphin. The well is expected to take 45 days. Pre­drill reserve estimates range from 26 to 80 million BOE. The well is close to existing infrastructure, including the Tor and Ekofisk complexes. The Gomez well is one of three exploration wells scheduled this year. The first, Røver Nord (DNO 20%), resulted in what is likely a commercial discovery. Following Gomez, Mugnetind is expected to spud in Q4 2021. Petrobras Starts Production of FPSO Carioca in Sépia Field Petrobras began producing oil and natural gas from FPSO Carioca, the first platform in Sépia field, in the Santos Basin pre­salt. The FPSO is located approximately 200 km off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, in water depths of 2200 m. The FPSO, chartered from Modec, has the capacity to process up to 180,000 B/D and to compress up to 6 million m3 of natural gas. Seven producing wells and four injection wells will be hooked into the FPSO. The oil production will be transported by offloading vessels, while the gas production will be moved through the pre­salt gas pipeline routes. The project also has a system to remove CO2 from the gas produced and reinject it into the reservoir, reducing the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and improving oil recovery. The Sépia shared reservoir comprises the Sépia and Sépia Leste fields, located in the Transfer of Rights and Concession (BM­S­24) areas, respectively, and operated by Petrobras (97.6%) in partnership with Petrogal Brasil (2.4%).

Purpose Data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric technique is used to assess the efficiency of decision-making units which are producing identical set of outputs using identical set of inputs. The purpose of this paper is to find the technical efficiency (TE), pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency (SE) levels of Indian oil and gas sector companies and to provide benchmark targets to the inefficient companies in order to achieve efficiency level. Design/methodology/approach In the present study, a group of 22 oil and gas companies which are listed on the National Stock Exchange for which the data were available for the period 2013–2017 has been considered. DEA has been performed to compare the efficiency levels of all companies. To measure efficiency, three input variables, namely, combined materials consumed and manufacturing expenses, employee benefit expenses and capital investment and two output variables – operating revenues and profit after tax (PAT) have been considered. On the basis of performance for the financial year ending 2017, benchmark targets based on DEA–CCR (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes) model have been provided to the inefficient companies that should be focused upon by them to attain the efficiency level. The performance of the companies for the past five years has been examined to check the fluctuations in the various efficiency scores of the companies considered in the study over the years. Findings From the results obtained, it is observed that 59 percent, i.e. 13 out of 22 companies are technically efficient. By considering DEA BCC (Banker, Charnes and Cooper) model, 16 companies are observed to be pure technically efficient. In terms of SE, there are 14 such companies. The inefficient units need to improve in terms of input and output variables and for this motive, specified targets are assigned to them. Some of these companies need to upgrade significantly and the managers must take the concern earnestly. The study has also thrown light on the performance of the companies over last five years which shows Oil India Ltd, Gujarat State Petronet Ltd, Petronet LNG Ltd, IGL Ltd, Mahanagar Gas, Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd and BPCL Ltd as consistently efficient companies. Research limitations/implications The present study has made an attempt to evaluate the efficiency of Indian oil and gas sector. The results of the study have significant inferences for the policy makers and managers of the companies operating in the sector. The results of the study provide benchmark target level to the companies of Oil and Gas sector which can help the managers of the relatively less efficient companies to focus on the ways to improve efficiency. The improvement in efficiency of a company would not only benefit the shareholders, but also the investors and other stakeholders of the company. Originality/value In the context of Indian economy, very limited number of studies have focused to measure the efficiency of oil and gas sector in the context of Indian economy. The present study aims to provide the latest insight to the efficiency of the companies especially operating in the Indian oil and gas sector. Further, as per our knowledge, this study is distinctive in terms of analyzing the efficiency of Indian oil and gas sector for a period of five years. The longitudinal study of the sector efficiency provides a bird eye view of the average efficiency level and changes in the efficiency levels of the companies over the years.

The condition of the state border area between Indonesia and Malaysia is totally different. Children of Indonesian Workers (TKI) have no (limited) access to learn in formal schools since they do not have citizenship documents. This study aims to analyze the implementation of basic education mission in the border area, particularly in Sebatik island, Nunukan regency, North Kalimantan province. In addition, the research was conducted using qualitative explorative approach. Problems arising at the border area are very diverse and systemic. The Indonesian government conducts the education in border areas still very limitedly. The role of the public, corporate and private companies (Three Net Working) becomes very important in operating the schools in border area. The role of a former lecturer who is famously called Mrs. Midwife Suraidah is very dominant in helping TKI’s children to learn a variety of knowledge in Sekolah Tapal Batas (Tapal Batas School) in Sebatik island, Nunukan Regency, North Kalimantan province. Some help from companies such as Pertamina (national oil mining company), Dompet Dhuafa foundation and volunteers who are willing to be teachers strongly support the continuously of Tapal Batas School. The continuity of basic education in the state border becomes a challenge for the government since the purpose of the country written in the opening of Constitution 1945 is the intellectual life of the nation can be realized by implementing it in Nawacita program.

Abstract. Today organizations of the oil-producing complex are not limited to financial reporting forms that are mandatory for submission by national and international standards, but also compile reports on sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, environmental reporting, collectively referred to as integrated reporting. The increased attention of interested users and, mainly, investors, to environmental and social problems determine the importance and importance of the formation of integrated reporting by companies, disclosing information on both financial and non-financial indicators. In modern conditions, when the problem of climate change becomes more acute, the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the fight against corruption is underway, companies will apply the practice of disclosing ESG investment factors in reporting. Accordingly, in order to attract investors, Russian firms need to strive to meet the ESG criteria. Key and potential investors need objective, timely, complete and reliable information to make decisions about investing resources in an enterprise. The disclosure of these components in the reporting is the basis for meeting the information needs of a wide range of users and mainly plays an important role in making investment decisions. The information presented in the integrated reporting is primarily interesting and useful to investors — individuals and legal entities who make or plan to invest their capital in the company’s securities in order to obtain economic benefits and (or) exercise control, since the completeness and transparency of information disclosure in the integrated reporting reflects the investment attractiveness of the company and future benefits. The purpose of the study is to assess the degree of disclosure of information necessary for investors in the integrated reporting of large Russian organizations of the oil production complex. The research method is a quantitative and qualitative rating assessment of the specific weight of ESG factors in the integrated reporting of oil companies. As a result of the study, key ESG factors have been identified, which are currently insufficiently disclosed in non-financial statements of companies. The results of the study can be useful to companies when making decisions about the disclosure of ESG factors in integrated reporting.

The approaching retirement of experienced petroleum engineers and technical staff, which threatens to result in the loss of a significant quantity of cumulative knowledge and expertise, is one of the major challenges facing the industry. Within the next ten years, it is predicted that approximately 231,000 years of collective knowledge will be on the line. To overcome this difficulty, knowledge management has emerged as a major method. This research investigates the strategies, tools, and processes implemented to successfully capture, organize, and share knowledge across the organization through a thorough analysis of the KM initiatives undertaken by Big Red Company. With a focus on their effective application by national and international oil companies in Indonesia, it also examines the results and impacts of these KM practices on the company's performance and competitiveness in both local and global contexts. Considering these circumstances, the company needs to improve the knowledge management system for managing knowledge, which is through the implementation of a Knowledge Management (KM) system. In doing this, the research is based on two research questions. The first is how is the current Knowledge Management maturity level in the Big Red Company Operation Division, specifically in the Testing and Subsea, and the second is What is the knowledge management implementation plan that can be suggested related to the proposed knowledge management process after knowing the maturity level of knowledge management in Big Red Company. These two research questions will be answered using theories related to knowledge, knowledge management, and two knowledge management frameworks, namely APO Knowledge Management Framework and Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Internalization (SECI). Because a qualitative method is used in this research, data is collected through interviews and observations, which are then analysed using thematic analysis. The results of data collection show that there are several issues related to the APO KM Framework and SECI frameworks. These issues range from the limited in the Testing and Subsea division, which is in Operation Division, the lack of knowledge sharing processes within and between teams, the lack of proper knowledge transfer, difficulty in accessing knowledge and information due to manual access, and others. Through the utilization of APO KM Framework and SECI frameworks, the author was able to design a knowledge management system by formulating several tools, for example, Coaching, Training, Knowledge café, Lesson-learned documents, K-based exit interview, and e-learning. With a total of 12 (thirteen) knowledge management tools or techniques, the company now has the ability to identify the knowledge needed, capture the knowledge, store the knowledge, share the knowledge, and effectively utilize knowledge and information which can improve the organization’s performance, enhance decision-making processes, and foster innovation and collaboration, thereby gaining a competitive advantage in the lifting equipment industry which ultimately contributes greatly to the growth of the company. For the knowledge management system implementation process, it will be divided into 5 (five) stages: Preparation, Identification, Development, Implementation and Evaluation to ensure that the knowledge management system is implemented effectively, its impact can be measured, and areas for improvement can be identified to make necessary changes. Implementation will begin in January of 2024, and there will be a dedicated Person In Charge (PIC) for all knowledge management initiatives to monitor the progress and ensure the sustainability of this system.

The privatisation and commercialisation Decree No. 25 of 1988 (amended 1999) which provided the legal backing for the Technical Committee of Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC), began the major paradigm shift in the conceptualisation of public enterprises in Nigeria. The paper primarily examined the privatisation exercise in Nigeria since 1988. It also attempted to provide measures that will simplify the complex process of privatisation with the hope of lessening the probability of crisis. The paper considered the impact of privatisation on performance of privatised companies, changes in employment and the increase in the prices of commodities of the enterprises vis-à-vis their gross income towards the overall good governance of the Nigerian society.The data for the paper were mainly secondary; and were drawn from the financial statements of companies in the stock Exchange and other stock Exchange reports, Central Bank Bulletins, publications and published reports of the Bureau of Public Enterprises. Newspapers and publication of the Federal Office of Statistics are other sources. The data were analysed by trend analysis using absolute figures, percentages and ratios based on the past record on privatisation in Nigeria.However, the study discovered that only a few successful enterprises, Flour Mills, African Petroleum, National oil and Chemical Marketing Company Limited (NOLCHEM) were partially privatised. The commercialisation of enterprises such as National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), Nigeria Telecommunications (NITEL) and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), hardly showed any significant improvement in their operational and economic performance.The papers showed that employment levels were affected by privatisation. Between 1989 and 1993, the public sector accounted for more job losses than privatised companies. When privatised firms employment rose, public and private sectors still had lower employment levels. The sharp increase in prices between 1992 and 1994 did not create a sufficient increase in gross earnings for 1994. The results revealed that a reduction in public control would have an effect (at least in the short term) on prices. Profits increase but the extent to which this increase can attributed to reduction of government controls is not clear. Three banks witnessed sharp increase in investments and profitability immediately after privatisation, and there was a slight decrease before another increase. Results showed that privatisation has improved company performance, especially in the efficiency of resources utilisation. Higher profit to capital employed ratios has been witnessed since privatisation. Debt/Total Asset ratios have not been affected in any adverse way. Results from the study also revealed that price increases in excess of 200% occurred immediately after privatisation. This perhaps has an effect on the profits of the companies (especially those that still maintained monopoly status for a while.However, one fact is clear: the heydays of public enterprises in Nigeria are gone for good. It was on this note that the study concluded that privatisation is the appropriate economic recipe to achieve the much desired human development and good governance.

In today’s world, people study and evaluate trading stocks to make informed decisions, based on available financial data and market information. Previous researchers relied on trend identification before making any decision to buy or sell stocks but fail to make accurate decisions due to complex systems. Some studies showed analysis to apply to stop loss on every stock transaction that got wrong levels due to limited features scaling that relied on single indicators without checking the performance metrics such as mean, standard deviation, and value at risk. Some existing models are based on theoretical implementation and they possess inaccurate success in real-time stock market transactions. Earlier risk management techniques were based on fundamental statistics of the company performance based on specific quarters that propose the future expects in the positive direction that is not every true which results in huge financial loss. Previous researchers failed to consider dynamic risk management parameters to ensure minimum loss for decision-making in fast-moving stock variations. Machine learning simply refers to learning about computers and making predictions from data. Identifying and analyzing the risk factors in the stock market are the major and crucial stage for predicting the company stock values at the national and international levels. In existing research, all risk management-related factors are analyzed based on fundamental statistics of the company performance which are measured as quarterly results, which will not give long-term true predictions and will not provide positive directions to invest in further stocks. This research majorly focused on risk management for national stock companies using the machine learning methodology and algorithms. The objective is to determine if stock market indicators are suitable decision-aid tools within the context of intraday risk management. The review of the literature revealed that while there are many studies looking to foresee changes in the stock market, there are few studies looking to improve stock market risk management methods using machine learning algorithms. The goal of this study was to fill this gap by utilizing the body of existing research on stock index forecasting combined with machine learning techniques for both short- and long-term risk managements. It has described the association between machine learning models and implicated the data with respect to discrete models based on supportive, dependable, nondependable parameters along with the name and type of the stock. This research has integrated a few crucial dependable parameters such as oil prices, on-hand projects, and future projects. It has integrated with the simple, multiple linear regression models to generate a signal for SPY growth. The proposed ML-based model has been evaluated by comparing two states of training and testing and achieved 96.3% of accuracy. The parameters used for evaluation are closing price, price differences, and daily return. The performance range of the proposed multiple regression model lies along the maximum drawn down which is 0.04411 for test cases and 1.2533 for training cases. Compare the performance of the proposed approach with that existing models with respect to the number of keys and methods associated with training and testing the data.

Natural gas is a clean-burning, safe fuel that can save you money at the pump while benefitting the environment and reducing Nigeria’s dependence on petroleum. It is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbon, non-gaseous non-hydrocarbons and gaseous non-hydrocarbons found in underground reservoir rocks either on its own (non-associated gas) or in association with crude oil (associated gas). Natural gas is today accepted as one of the best sources of energy for the world and for the future because of its environmentally-friendly nature compared to other kinds of fossil fuels. Nigeria is ranked as the seventh most natural gas endowed nation in the world and relaxes on number one spot in Africa as she seats on about one hundred and eighty-eight trillion cubic feet of natural gas deposits.Current opportunities to utilize gas in Nigeria include: Gas to reinjection schemes, Gas to power schemes, Gas to petrochemicals (as feedstock), LNG-Liquefied Natural Gas, LPG- Liquefied Petroleum Gas, and CNG- Compressed Natural Gas. The use of CNG as auto fuel in Nigeria presents so much benefits as have been highlighted in this paper with emphasis on the economic advantage. Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is a product of compressing natural gas to one hundredth the volume it occupies at standard atmospheric pressure.A comprehensive economic analysis to determine the cost savings from driving a car on CNG against PMS considered the case of a motorist who covers an average of 100 km every day in the approximately thirty days that make a month was employed. Results established that running a car on CNG amounts to saving N1 143 daily and N34 284 monthly, the cost of converting the car from PMS - driven to CNG - driven is recovered before the end of the sixth month. From the sixth month to the end of the first year, savings of N211 402 is made. Savings of N411 408 is enjoyed each year after the first year.Running vehicles on CNG will greatly reduce the friction and troubles encountered in importing fuel into the country. This will also cut down largely the hardly available foreign exchange expended in bringing in PMS for fuelling vehicles. To this end, the Nigerian Government should as a matter of national development ensure legal and regulatory framework encompassing both technical and commercial aspects for natural gas utilization in Nigeria. Worthy of note is the aspect of gas gathering, gas transmission and distribution which will further encourage the planting of CNG refuelling stations that will serve the expected large fleet of natural gas vehicles. Currently, Green Gas Limited, a joint venture between Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) a Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and NIPCO Plc. that has nine operational CNG refuelling stations and others under construction is the only company driving the CNG revolution in the country.

Natural gas is a clean-burning, safe fuel that can save you money at the pump while benefitting the environment and reducing Nigeria’s dependence on petroleum. It is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbon, non-gaseous non-hydrocarbons and gaseous non-hydrocarbons found in underground reservoir rocks either on its own (non-associated gas) or in association with crude oil (associated gas). Natural gas is today accepted as one of the best sources of energy for the world and for the future because of its environmentally-friendly nature compared to other kinds of fossil fuels. Nigeria is ranked as the seventh most natural gas endowed nation in the world and relaxes on number one spot in Africa as she seats on about one hundred and eighty-eight trillion cubic feet of natural gas deposits.Current opportunities to utilize gas in Nigeria include: Gas to reinjection schemes, Gas to power schemes, Gas to petrochemicals (as feedstock), LNG-Liquefied Natural Gas, LPG- Liquefied Petroleum Gas, and CNG- Compressed Natural Gas. The use of CNG as auto fuel in Nigeria presents so much benefits as have been highlighted in this paper with emphasis on the economic advantage. Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is a product of compressing natural gas to one hundredth the volume it occupies at standard atmospheric pressure.A comprehensive economic analysis to determine the cost savings from driving a car on CNG against PMS considered the case of a motorist who covers an average of 100 km every day in the approximately thirty days that make a month was employed. Results established that running a car on CNG amounts to saving N1 143 daily and N34 284 monthly, the cost of converting the car from PMS - driven to CNG - driven is recovered before the end of the sixth month. From the sixth month to the end of the first year, savings of N211 402 is made. Savings of N411 408 is enjoyed each year after the first year.Running vehicles on CNG will greatly reduce the friction and troubles encountered in importing fuel into the country. This will also cut down largely the hardly available foreign exchange expended in bringing in PMS for fuelling vehicles. To this end, the Nigerian Government should as a matter of national development ensure legal and regulatory framework encompassing both technical and commercial aspects for natural gas utilization in Nigeria. Worthy of note is the aspect of gas gathering, gas transmission and distribution which will further encourage the planting of CNG refuelling stations that will serve the expected large fleet of natural gas vehicles. Currently, Green Gas Limited, a joint venture between Nigeria Gas Company (NGC) a Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and NIPCO Plc. that has nine operational CNG refuelling stations and others under construction is the only company driving the CNG revolution in the country.

The oil and gas industry is recovering along with the health situation and the world’s economy following one of the largest downturns in its 160-year history caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. What comes ahead brings its own challenges. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group 1 contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, published in August, highlighted the “widespread and rapid acceleration of climate change,” with the 1.5°C threshold reached as early as the end of this decade. The dramatic weather events around the globe this summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) with historical temperature records on the North American Pacific Coast and in the central and eastern Mediterranean regions, and huge fires impacting those regions and others such as Siberia, were a reminder that the transformation is occurring now. In this context, the energy mix that the world uses today needs to evolve to a more rational use through energy efficiency and with a lower carbon content, starting from the use of coal. The oil and gas industry has been pioneering the development of technologies such as carbon capture and underground storage and blue hydrogen. International oil companies and national oil companies rank amongst the largest technology investors in renewables and energy storage. Renewables also have a strong potential in applications such as steam injection. Collaboration among the industry and with other peripheral sectors will be an essential ingredient to accelerate the transformation of the energy sector. I personally started in the oil and gas industry more than 4 decades ago in research and development (R&D) with a large oilfield service company, where I led a team of scientists investigating hydraulic fracturing. One of the projects was related to acid fracturing, which required the injection of a viscous non-Newtonian pad to fracture the formation and keep the fracture open, followed by acid which had a much lower viscosity. The two-fluid displacement inside the fracture led to an instability called viscous fingering. In order to understand the phenomenon, we put together a very diverse team, comprising a mathematician, an astrophysicist, a physicochemist, and a geologist. The team was unable to initially work well together and collaborate. The breakthrough came when a high-level scientist from Boston University, a specialist in critical phenomena, was added as a catalyst to the team. Within a few months, the team managed to develop and validate a model for viscous fingering using diffusion-limited aggregation and fractal theory, and its work was published in Nature and the American Physical Society’s Physical Reviews Journals. The team then developed a new set of models for wormholes created by the injection of acid through matrix acidizing and fracture acidizing which were used to create the required chemistry to ensure effectiveness of the treatments. I remain convinced that if we had not included the diversity of the skills and used a catalyst for collaboration, we would not have cracked the research code so rapidly.

Jersey Oil and Gas Unearths Wengen Prospect The Greater Buchan Area (GBA) now has four drill-ready prospects to add to discoveries already slated for development. In a new subsurface evaluation, Jersey Oil & Gas, a British-independent North Sea-focused upstream oil and gas company, has uncovered a new prospect, named Wengen, to complement its Verbier Deep, Cortina NE, and Zermatt drill-ready prospects. The four are estimated to host some 222 million bbl of P50 prospective resources, all in the immediate vicinity of Jersey’s planned GBA production facility. The consolidated Greater Buchan venture comprises Buchan field (80 million bbl), Verbier (c25 million bbl), J2 (c20 million), and Glenn (14 million). The new prospect, located in License P2170, is directly west of the Tweedsmuir field and should host some 62 million bbl of potential resources (P50), with the probabilistic range set at 31 million bbl at P90 (higher confidence) and 162 mil-lion for P10 (lower confidence). Probability of geological success is 22% for the prospect. Contractor Rockflow previously estimated the recoverable resources in the GBA at 94.7 million bbl, including the parts within P2170. In late November, Jersey announced it is taking full ownership of License P2170, which hosts most of the Verbier discovery, as part of the GBA. In March, Jersey told investors the project is fully funded and that it intends to take the project to potential industry partners via a farm-out process. An exploratory drilling campaign is being planned for 2022. Jordan Finds “Promising” Gas Reserves Near Iraq Border Jordan’s majority state-owned National Petroleum Company (NPC) has discovered “promising” natural gas in the Risha gas field along its eastern border with Iraq. Risha makes up nearly 5% of the kingdom’s consumption of natural gas of around 350 MMcf/D for power generation, Jordanian officials said. The flow of new gas supplies will raise the productivity of the gas field and help Jordan cut dependence on oil imports to fuel its power sector and industries. The country, which now imports over 93% of its total energy supplies, is burdened by a $3.5-billion annual bill, comprising almost 8% of Jordan’s GDP. Although British supermajor BP abandoned the eastern desert area in 2014 after investing over $240 million, Jordanian exploration has stepped up since 2019, boosting quantities by at least 70%, Mohammad al Khasawneh, head of NPC, said. An ambitious 10-year energy plan unveiled in 2019 aims to secure nearly half of the country’s electricity generation from local energy sources com-pared to a current 15%, according to Iraq Energy Minister Hala Zawati. The plan is meant to diversify local energy sources by expanding investments in renewable and oil shale to reduce costly foreign fuel imports, Zawati added. ExxonMobil Discovers Hydrocarbons Offshore Suriname ExxonMobil and Petronas have discovered several hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone zones with good reservoir qualities in the Campanian section of the Sloanea-1 exploration well on Block 52 offshore Suriname, adding to ExxonMobil’s finds in the Guyana-Suriname basin. The well was drilled by operator Petronas. ExxonMobil said in November that it is prioritizing near-term capital spending on advantaged assets with the highest potential future value. Maersk Drilling reported in early July that it had secured the Maersk Developer from Petronas subsidiary PSEPBV in a $20.4-million one-well exploration con-tract offshore Suriname. The semisubmersible rig drilled the Suriname-Guyana basin well to a total depth of 15,682 ft. “We are pleased with the positive results of the well,” Emeliana Rice-Oxley, Petronas’ vice president of upstream exploration, said. “It will provide the drive for Petronas to continue exploring in Suriname, which is one of our focus basins in the Americas.” Block 52 covers an area of 1.2 million acres and is located approximately 75 miles offshore north of Paramaribo. The water depths on Block 52 range from 160 to 3,600 ft. ExxonMobil E&P Suriname BV, an affiliate of ExxonMobil, holds 50% interest in Block 52. PSEPBV is operator and holds 50% interest. CNOOC Starts Production on Penglai 25-6 Oil Field Area 3 Project China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) announced on 14 December that its Bohai Sea Project - the Penglai 25-6 oil field area 3 - has started production ahead of schedule. The biggest offshore oil field and the second biggest oil field in China, the Penglai is located in the south central Bohai Sea, with average water depth of about 27 m. In addition to fully utilizing the existing processing facilities of Penglai oil fields, the project has built a new wellhead platform and plans 58 development wells, including 38 production wells and 20 water-injection wells. The project is expected to reach its peak production of approximately 11,511 B/D of crude oil in 2023. Six successful appraisal wells were also drilled, which confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons in reservoirs located with-in Miocene, Lower Minghuazhen, and Guantao sandstones. The Penglai 19-3 oil field is located in Block 11/05 of Bohai Bay, approximately 235 km southeast of Tanggu. The production-sharing contract for block 11/05 was signed between CNOOC and ConocoPhillips China (COPC) in December 1994; the field was discovered jointly by CNOOC and COPC in 1999. The oil field was developed in two phases. Phase I production started in December 2002; production from the wellhead platform C, which is tied back temporarily to the production facilities of Phase I, began in June 2007. Since June 2020, CNOOC has announced five production startups: the Jinzhou 25-1 oilfield 6/11 area project, the Liuhua 16-2 oilfield/ 20-2 oil-field joint development project, the Nan-bao 35-2 oilfield S1 area project, the Luda 21-2/16-3 regional development project, and the Qinhuangdao 33-1S oilfield phase-I project. In Q3 2020, CNOOC achieved a total net production of 131.2 million BOE, which the company said represented an increase of 5.1% year over year. Production from China was said to have increased by 10.4% year over year to 88.6 million BOE. In November, CNOOC revealed that the Liuhua 29-1 gas field had begun production; in September, the company said the Bozhong 19-6 condensate gas field pilot area development project had also begun. Operator CNOOC holds 51% interest while COPC holds 49% interest in the Penglai 25-6 oilfield area 3 project. Equinor’s Snorre Expansion Project Starts Ahead of Schedule, Below Cost Work began in December on the Snorre Expansion Project in the southern part of the Norwegian Sea. This increased-oil-recovery project will add almost 200 million bbl of recoverable oil reserves and help extend the productive life of the Snorre field through 2040. The expansion project is proposed in blocks 34/4 and 34/7 of the Tampen area, approximately 124 miles west of Florø in the Norwegian North Sea. “I am proud that we have managed to achieve safe startup of the Snorre Expansion Project ahead of schedule in such a challenging year as 2020. In addition, the project is set to be delivered more than NOK 1 billion below the cost estimate in the plan for development and operation,” Geir Tungesvik, Equinor’s executive vice president for technology, projects, and drilling, said. Originally scheduled to come onstream in the first quarter of 2021, the project comprises 24 new wells divided into six subsea templates, drilled to recover the new volumes. Bundles connecting the new wells to the platform have been installed, in addition to new risers. The project also includes a new module and modifications on Snorre A. In December 2017, Equinor submitted a modified plan for development and operation of the field. With the expansion, the recovery factor will increase from 46 to 51%, representing significant value for a field with 2 billion bbl of recoverable oil reserves. Wind power will supply about 35% of the power requirement for the Snorre and Gullfaks fields. The Hywind Tampen project, featuring 11 floating wind turbines, should start up in Q3 2022. The investments in the expansion project total NOK 19.5 billion (2020 value). The project has had substantial spin-off effects for the supply industry in Norway, particularly in eastern Norway and in Rogaland. The Snorre field partnership comprises Equinor (operator) 33.27%, Petoro 30%, Vår Energi 18.55%, Idemitsu 9.6%, and Wintershall Dea 8.57%. Petrobras To Sell Entire Stake in Onshore Field of Sergipe Petrobras on 11 December signed a contract with Energizzi Energias do Brasil to sell its entire stake in the onshore field of Rabo Branco, located south of the Carmópolis field in the Sergipe-Alagoas Basin, Sergipe state. The Rabo Branco field is part of the BT-SEAL-13 concession. The $1.5-million sale is in line with Petrobras’ strategy to cut costs and improve its capital allocation, to focus its resources increasingly on deep and ultradeep waters. The average oil production of the field, from January to October 2020, was 138 B/D. Energizzi Energias do Brasil will own 50% stake in the Rabo Branco field; operator Produção de Óleo e Gás (Petrom) holds the remaining 50%. On 10 December, Petrobras closed the divestiture of its full ownership in four onshore fields at the Tucano Basin site in the state of Bahia. Petrobras sold its entire interest to Eagle Exploração de Óleo e Gás (Eagle). Petrobras earned $2.571 million from this sale, in addition to the $602,000 that the company received at the time of signing the sale contract, for a total of $3.173 million. BP, Reliance Announce First Gas From Asia’s Deepest Project Oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and BP have started production from India’s first ultradeepwater gas project, the first of three such projects in the KG D6 block. The R Cluster gas field is located off the east coast of India, about 60 km from the existing KG D6 control-and-riser platform (CRP), and comprises a subsea production system tied back to the CRP via a subsea pipeline. It is the deepest offshore gas field in Asia at a depth greater than 2000 m. The companies’ next project, the Satellites Cluster, is expected to come on stream this year, followed by the MJ project in 2022. These projects will utilize the existing hub infrastructure in the KG D6 block. “Growing India’s own production of cleaner-burning gas to meet a significant portion of its energy demand, these three new KG D6 projects will support the country’s drive to shape and improve its future energy mix,” BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney said. The R Cluster field is expected to reach plateau gas production of about 12.9 million standard cubic meters per day (MMscm/D) in 2021. Peak gas production from the three fields should be 30 MMscm/D (1 Bcf/D) by 2023, about 25% of India’s domestic production, and will help reduce the country’s dependence on imported gas. RIL is the operator of KG D6 with a 66.67% interest; BP holds a 33.33% participating interest.

ExxonMobil, Partners Tout New Angola Block 15 Discovery ExxonMobil has made a new oil discovery with the Bavuca South-1 exploration well in Block 15 offshore Angola. The well is part of the Angola Block 15 redevelopment project targeting to deliver around 40,000 B/D of new oil production. According to ExxonMobil, the well encountered 30 m of hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone. The probe is located approximately 365 km northwest of Luanda and was drilled in 1100 m of water by the Valaris DS-9 rig. As the block’s operator, ExxonMobil is leading the installation of new technology and a multiyear drilling program aimed at adding new production volumes to help offset natural production declines. There have been 17 previous discoveries on Block 15: Hungo, Kissanje, Marimba, and Dikanza in 1998; Chocalho and Xikomba in 1999; Mondo, Saxi, and Batuque in 2000; Mbulumbumba, Vicango, and Mavacola in 2001; Reco Reco in 2002; and Clochas, Kakocha, Tchihumba, and Bavuca in 2003. ExxonMobil affiliate Esso Exploration Angola (Block 15) Limited is the operator of Block 15 and holds a 36% interest. BP Exploration (Angola) Limited holds 24%, ENI Angola Exploration BV holds 18%, Equinor Angola Block 15 AS holds 12%, and Sonangol P&P holds 10%. The National Agency for Petroleum, Gas, and Biofuels (ANPG) is the Block 15 concessionaire. Neptune Energy Begins Drilling Calypso Exploration Well Neptune Energy has spudded its Calypso exploration well 6407/88 S in the Norwegian Sea utilizing semisubmersible Deepsea Yantai. The Calypso prospect is located 14 km northwest of the Draugen field and 22 km northeast of the Njord A platform, within the Neptune-operated PL938 license. Calypso is positioned within one of Neptune’s core areas on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. In the event of a commercial discovery, Calypso could potentially be tied back to existing infrastructure. The reservoir target is the middle and lower Jurassic formations and is expected to be reached at a depth of approximately 2960 m. The drilling program comprises a main bore (6407/8-8 A) with an optional sidetrack (6407/8-8 S) based on the outcome of the exploration well. Neptune Energy operates the well with a 30% working interest. Partners include OKEA ASA, 30%; Pandion Energy AS, 20%; and Vår Energi ASA, 20%. Petrobras Strikes Oil Near Sepia Field Petrobras has a new oil find at its 4-BRSA-1386D-RJS (Pedunculo) well in the extreme northwest of the Sépia field in Brazil’s Santos Basin. The well spud in late July in a water depth of 2200 m, and the oil-bearing interval was verified by logs and fluid samples. According to Petrobras, the effective thickness of the oil column is one of the largest ever recorded in Brazil. The discovery is in the Sepia coparticipation area and comprises the Sepia block acquired by Petrobras (100%), and the Sépia-ECO block, which was acquired in December 2021 in the ANP’s second bidding round of surplus volumes. Petrobras (operator) was awarded Sépia-ECO along with partners TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy, and Petronas Petróleo Brasil Ltda., with Pré-Sal Petróleo SA as manager. The Sépia shared reservoir is currently producing 170,000 B/D. Petrobras also successfully completed the test at the pioneer well 1-BRSA-1381-SPS (Curaçao) in the pre-salt of the southwestern part of the Santos Basin. The new discovery is located 240 km from the city of Santos-SP, at a depth of 1905 m, in the Aram Block. The test evaluated a thick range of pre-salt carbonate reservoirs, in which it was possible to know its productivity through dynamic production data, according to Petrobras. During the test, oil samples were collected that will be characterized by laboratory analyses. The consortium will continue its activities in the Aram Block, aiming to evaluate the dimensions and commerciality of the new accumulation. The block was acquired in March 2020, in the sixth bidding round of the ANP, under the production-sharing regime, with Pré-Sal Petróleo SA as manager. Petrobras is the operator of the block (80% interest) in partnership with CNPC 20%. Shell, Murphy Eye Fresh Mexican Gulf Wildcats Shell is preparing to drill an exploration test in the Salina basin in offshore Mexico. According to Mexican hydrocarbons regulator CNH, the supermajor intends to spud the Jokol-1EXP wildcat in Block 28 starting in January 2023. The operator plans to use drillship Maersk Voyager for the work. The rig has been drilling the Zanderij-1 probe in Block 42 offshore Suriname and is expected to depart for Mexico soon. The Jokol-1EXP well is set to test a prospective light-oil reservoir at final depth of around 5586 m. The wellsite is roughly 40 km southwest of the Tamha-1EXP well. Meanwhile, Murphy Oil is drilling ahead on the deepwater Tulum-1EXP, where it hopes to tap 150 million BOE in reserves off the coast of Tabasco. The operator’s Mexican subsidiary, Murphy Sur, received authorization from CNH earlier this year. Murphy will use the Valaris DPS-5 semisubmersible to target lower Miocene and Oligocene formations and is drilling Tulum-1EXP as a deviated well to a depth of 5569 m. Tulum-1EXP is the second exploratory well of the Block 5 consortium led by Murphy Sur (40%), with partners PC Carigali Mexico Operations, Petronas’ Mexican subsidiary, and Wintershall Dea holding 30% each. Block 5 is in the center of the highly touted Salina Basin, a deepwater area in Mexico with significant hydrocarbon potential. CNOOC Has Certified Gas Find With Baodao 21-1 The proved gas-in-place of CNOOC’s Baodao 21-1 gas field has been certified at 50 billion m3 by the Chinese government. Baodao 21-1 gas field is in Baodao Sag, Qiongdongnan Basin, Western South China Sea in water depths ranging from 660 to 1570 m. The main gas-bearing zone is the Paleogene Lingshui formation, and the discovery is in condensate gas reservoirs. The discovery well Baodao 21-1 completed at a total depth of 5188 m, encountering 113 m of gas pay. The well is tested to produce an average of 587,000 m3 of natural gas per day. Baodao 21-1 is the first deepwater, deep-stratum large gas field in the South China Sea, realizing the biggest discovery in more than half a century in Songnan-Baodao Sag, according to CNOOC. ADNOC Sets Well-Length Record Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) said it set a new world record for the longest oil and gas well at its Upper Zakum Concession. Stretching 50,000 ft, the well is around 800 ft longer than the previous world record set in 2017. ADNOC Drilling drilled the well from Umm Al Anbar, one of ADNOC Offshore’s artificial islands. The extended-reach wells will tap into an undeveloped part of the giant Upper Zakum reservoir with the potential to increase the field’s production capacity by 15,000 B/D. Umm Al Anbar is one of Upper Zakum’s four artificial islands, serving as a hub for offshore drilling and operations. The producer added that its use of the artificial island concept has resulted in cost savings and environmental benefits compared to conventional approaches that traditionally require more offshore installations and infrastructure. New Tampen Area Wells Planned The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate issued to Equinor, Aker BP, and Var Energi a pair of drilling permits for exploration wells in the Tampen area of the Norwegian North Sea. The partnership has applied to drill the 34/6-6A wildcat in PL-554 using drilling rig Transocean Spitsbergen. The well is located to the northeast of the Visund field. Equinor will operate the well with a 40% working interest. Aker BP and Var Energi each hold a 30% stake. The second probe, 34/6-6S, was also permitted by the same partnership in the same license. Petronas Strengthens Partnership With TotalEnergies and Shell Through New PSC Petronas has signed a production-sharing contract (PSC) with TotalEnergies EP Malaysia, Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd (PCSB), Sabah Shell Petroleum Company Limited (SSPC), and Shell Sabah Selatan Sdn Bhd (SSS) for Block 2K, an ultradeepwater block located off the coast of Sabah. Block SB 2K, with depths up to 3000 m, covering 1952 km2, is in the northwest ultradeepwater area within a proven hydrocarbon basin. Under the PSC terms, TotalEnergies will be the operator with a 34.9% participating interest. PCSB holds a 40% participating interest while the remaining 25.1% is equally split between the other two partners, SSPC and SSS. The signing of the PSC for Block 2K completes the licensing of the five ultradeepwater blocks off the coast of Sabah, along the newly identified Oligo-Miocene carbonate trend proven by Tepat-1 oil discovery in Block N in 2018. Block 2V was signed last year followed by Blocks 2W and X early this year. A total of four wells are expected to be drilled in these blocks in 2022 and 2023.

Sonadrill Lands Contract for Drillship Seadrill confirmed a new contract has been secured by Sonadrill Holding, Seadrill’s 50:50 joint venture with an affiliate of Sonangol for the drillship West Gemini. Sonadrill has secured a 10‑well contract with options for up to eight additional wells in Angola for an unknown operator. Total contract value for the firm portion of the deal is expected to be around $161 million, with further revenue potential from a performance bonus. The rig is expected to begin the work in the fourth quarter of this year with a firm term of about 18 months, in direct continuation of the West Gemini’s existing contract. The West Gemini is the third drillship to be bareboat chartered into Sonadrill, along with two Sonangol‑owned units, the Sonangol Quenguela and Sonangol Libongos. Seadrill will manage and operate the units on behalf of Sonadrill. Together, the three units position the Seadrill joint venture as an active rig operator in Angola, furthering the goal of building an ultradeepwater franchise in the Golden Triangle and driving efficiencies from rig clustering in the region. Petrobras Receives TotalEnergies, Shell Payments for Atapu TotalEnergies and Shell have formalized payments to Petrobras for separate, minority stakes in the pre‑salt Atapu field in the Santos Basin. TotalEnergies paid $4.7 billion reais ($940 million) while Shell paid closer to $1.1 billion. The Atapu block was acquired by the consortium comprising Petrobras (52.5%), Shell (25%), and TotalEnergies (22.5%) in the Second Bidding Round for the Transfer of Rights auction held 17 December 2021. The payments are compensation for monies spent thus far by Petrobras, which was granted contractual rights to produce 550 million BOE from Atapu in 2010. The partners will now work together to produce additional volumes from the field. Production at Atapu started in June 2020 via the P-70 FPSO. The unit is in about 2000 m of water and has the capacity to produce 150,000 BOED. CNOOC Brings New Bohai Sea Discoveries On Stream CNOOC Limited has kicked off production from its Luda 5‑2 oil field North Phase I project and Kenli 6‑1 oil field 4‑1 Block development project. Luda 5‑2 is in the Liaodong Bay of Bohai Sea, with average water depth of about 32 m and utilizes a thermal recovery wellhead platform and production platform tied into the Suizhong 36‑1 oil field. A total of 28 development wells are planned, including 26 production wells and two water‑source wells. The project is expected to reach its peak production of 8,200 B/D of oil in 2024. Kenli 6‑1 is in the south of Bohai Sea, with average water depth of about 17 m. The resource is being developed by a wellhead platform in addition to fully utilizing the existing processing facilities of the Bozhong 34‑9 oil field. A total of 12 development wells are planned, including seven production wells and five water‑injection wells. The field is expected to reach its peak production of 4,000 B/D of oil later this year. CNOOC Limited is operator and sole owner of the Luda 5‑2 oil field North and the Kenli 6‑1 oil field 4‑1 Block. Stabroek Block Bounty Off Guyana Gets Bigger The partners in the prolific Stabroek Block have again increased the gross discovered recoverable resource estimate for the area offshore Guyana. The owners now believe they have discovered reserves of at least 11 billion BOE, up from the previous estimate of more than 10 billion BOE. The updated resource estimate includes three new discoveries on the block at Barreleye, Lukanani, and Patwa in addition to the Fangtooth and Lau Lau discoveries announced earlier this year. The Barreleye‑1 well encountered approximately 70 m of hydrocarbon‑bearing sandstone reservoirs of which 16 m is high‑quality oil‑bearing. The well was drilled in 1170 m of water and is located 32 km southeast of the Liza field. The Lukanani‑1 well encountered 35 m of hydrocarbon‑bearing sandstone reservoirs of which approximately 23 m is high‑quality oil‑ bearing. The well was drilled in water depth of 1240 m and is in the southeastern part of the block, approximately 3 km west of the Pluma discovery. The Patwa‑1 well encountered 33 m of hydrocarbon‑bearing sandstone reservoirs. The well was drilled in 1925 m of water and is located approximately 5 km northwest of the Cataback‑1 discovery. “These new discoveries further demonstrate the extraordinary resource density of the Stabroek Block and will underpin our queue of future development opportunities,” said John Hess, chief executive of Hess and a partner in Stabroek. The co‑venturers have sanctioned four developments to date on Stabroek with both Liza and Liza Phase 2 on stream. The third planned development at Payara is ahead of schedule and is now expected to come on line in late 2023; it will utilize the Prosperity FPSO with a production capacity of 220,000 BOPD. The fourth development, Yellowtail, is expected to come on line in 2025, utilizing the ONE GUYANA FPSO with a production capacity of 250,000 BOPD of oil. At least six FPSOs with a production capacity of more than 1 million gross BOPD are expected to be on line on the Stabroek Block in 2027, with the potential for up to ten FPSOs to develop gross discovered recoverable resources. The Stabroek Block is 6.6 million acres. ExxonMobil affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited is operator and holds 45% interest; Hess Guyana Exploration holds 30% interest; and CNOOC Petroleum Guyana Limited holds 25%. ConocoPhillips Gets Ekofisk License Extension Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE) has extended production licenses in the Greater Ekofisk Area from 2028 to 2048 with ConocoPhillips as operator. The company said the license extension provides long‑term operations and resource management aligned with the company’s long‑term perspective on the Norwegian continental shelf. Fields on the shelf are required to operate with a valid production license where the operator and licensees enter into an agreement with the authorities, including relevant field activities. The authorities may require commitments, leading to increased oil recovery. The existing production licenses 018, 018 B, and 275 in the Greater Ekofisk Area were set to expire on 31 December 2028; however, the MPE approved an extension through 2048. The new terms provide a potential for extending Ekofisk’s lifetime to nearly 80 years. The license partners are ConocoPhillips (operator, 35.11%), TotalEnergies EP Norge (39.896%), Vår Energi (12.388%), Equinor (7.604%), and Petoro (5%). BHP’s Wasabi Disappoints in US GOM Australian operator BHP encountered noncommercial hydrocarbons with its Wasabi‑2 well in the US Gulf of Mexico. BHP said the well in Green Canyon Block 124 was plugged and abandoned following the disappointing results. “This completes the Wasabi exploration program, with results under evaluation to determine next steps,” the company said. The well was targeting oil in an early Miocene reservoir. Transocean drillship Deepwater Invictus spudded the well in 764 m of water in November 2021. The previous Wasabi‑1 well had a mechanical problem and was plugged and abandoned 4 days earlier, prior to reaching its prospective targets. BHP operates Wasabi with a 75% interest. Lukoil Says Titonskaya Holds 150 Million BOE Russia’s Lukoil believes it has discovered around 150 million BOE following analysis of the two wells it drilled at the Titonskaya structure on the Caspian Sea shelf. Work is now underway to refine the seismic models of productive deposits and study deep samples of formation fluids. The results of the assessment will be submitted to the State Reserves Commission of the Russian Federation. The structure is in the central part of the Caspian Sea, not far from the Khazri field. Lukoil drilled the first well at the Titonskaya structure in 2020 and announced the new discovery in April 2021. According to that assessment, the probable geological resources of the Titonskaya are 130.4 million tons. In 2021, drilling of the second prospecting and appraisal well began to identify oil and gas deposits in the terrigenous‑carbonate deposits of the Jurassic‑ Cretaceous age. The well was drilled using the Neptune jackup drilling rig. The new find at Titonskaya will likely be tied into Khazri infrastructure. Petrobras’ Roncador IOR Project Comes On Line Petrobras has successfully started production from the first two wells of the improved oil recovery (IOR) project at the Roncador field in the Campos Basin offshore Brazil. The two wells are the first of a series of IOR wells to reach production. Startup is almost 5 months ahead of schedule and at half of the planned cost, according to partner Equinor. The wells will add a combined 20,000 BOED to Roncador, bringing daily production to around 150,000 bbl and reducing the carbon intensity (emissions per barrel produced) of the field. Through this first IOR project, the partnership will drill 18 wells that are expected to provide additional recoverable resources of 160 million bbl. Improvements in well design and the partners’ combined technological experience are the main drivers behind the 50% cost reduction across the first six wells, including the two in production. Roncador is Brazil’s fifth‑largest producing asset and has been in production since 1999. Petrobras operates the field and holds a 75% stake. In 2018, Equinor entered the project as a strategic partner with the remaining 25% interest. In addition to the planned 18 IOR wells, the partnership believes it can further improve recovery and aims to increase recoverable resources by a total of 1 billion BOE. The field has more than 10 billion BOE in place under a license lasting until 2052. The strategic alliance agreement also includes an energy‑efficiency and CO2‑emissions‑reduction program for Roncador. Gazania-1 To Spud Off South Africa Africa Energy will move ahead with its planned Gazania‑1 wildcat well offshore South Africa after securing partner Eco Atlantic’s $20 million in capital requirements for its portion of the probe. The well will be drilled in Block 2B. Island Drilling semisubmersible Island Innovator has been contracted for the work and is expected to mobilize from its current location in the North Sea for the 45‑day trip to South Africa. The Block 2B joint venture plans to spud the well by October with drilling expected to last 30 days, including a full set of logs if the well is successful. The block has significant contingent and prospective resources in relatively shallow water and contains the A‑J1 discovery that flowed light sweet crude oil to surface. Gazania‑1 will target two large prospects 7 km updip from A‑J1 in the same region as the recent Venus and Graff discoveries. Block 2B is located offshore South Africa in the Orange Basin where both TotalEnergies and Shell recently announced significant oil and gas discoveries offshore Namibia. The block covers 3062 km2 approximately 25 km off the west coast of South Africa near the border with Namibia in water depths ranging from 50 m to 200 m. The Southern Oil Exploration Corp. (Soekor) discovered and tested oil on Block 2B in 1988 with the A‑J1 borehole, which intersected thick reservoir sandstones between 2985 m and 3350 m. The well flowed 191 B/D of 36 °API oil from a 10‑m sandstone interval at around 3250 m. Africa Energy has a 27.5% interest in Block 2B offshore South Africa. The block is operated by a subsidiary of Eco Atlantic which holds a 50% interest. A subsidiary of Panoro Energy holds a 12.5% stake, and Crown Energy AB indirectly holds the remaining 10%. Brazil Grants New Exploration Blocks Brazil’s National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (ANP) has granted 59 exploratory blocks of oil and natural gas to 13 companies, including Shell, TotalEnergies, and 3R Petroleum. The awards were part of a permanent bid offer round held in Rio de Janiero in April. The auction totaled 422.4 million reais in signature bonuses with leases granted in six Brazilian states: Rio Grande do Norte, Alagoas, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Santa Catarina, and Paraná. The awards will result in investments of 406.3 million reais in the exploratory phase of the contracts. Shell Brazil (70%) was granted six blocks in the Santos Basin in a consortium with the Colombian Ecopetrol (30%). The blocks leases were SM‑1599, SM‑1601, SM‑1713, SM‑1817, SM‑1908, and SM‑1910. TotalEnergies won two areas in the same basin while Brazilian company 3R Petroleum received six areas in the Potiguar Basin. Petro‑Victory was also awarded 19 new blocks in Potiguar, increasing its holdings in Brazil to 38 blocks (37 in Potiguar). The new blocks are nearby Petro‑Victory infrastructure at the Andorinha, Alto Alegre, and Trapia oil fields. Eni Finds More Oil in Egypt’s Western Desert Eni struck new oil and gas reserves with a trio of discoveries in the Meleiha concessions of Egypt’s Western Desert. The finds have already been tied into existing infrastructure in the region and have added around 8,500 BOED to overall production from the area. The operator drilled the Nada E Deep 1X well, which encountered 60 m of net hydrocarbon pay in the Cretaceous‑Jurassic Alam El Bueib and Khatatba formations Meleiha SE Deep 1X well, which found 30 m of net hydrocarbon pay in the Cretaceous‑Jurassic sands of the Matruh Khatatba formations, and the Emry Deep 21 well, which encountered 35 m of net hydrocarbon pay in the massive cretaceous sandstones of Alam El Bueib. The results, added to the discoveries of 2021 for a total of eight exploration wells, give Eni a 75% success rate in the region. The company added that additional exploration activities in the concession are ongoing with “promising indications.” With these discoveries, Eni, through AGIBA, a joint venture between Eni and EGPC, continues to pursue its near‑field strategy in the mature basin of the Western Desert, aimed at maximizing production by containing development costs and minimizing time to market. Eni is planning a new high‑resolution 3D seismic survey in the Meleiha concession this year to investigate the gas potential of the area. Eni is currently the leading producer in Egypt with an equity production of around 360,000 BOED.

AbstractThis paper deals with production and pricing policies for the Groningen gasfield. It will provide an evaluation of the past and a view to its future in a liberalized European gas market. The lifelong production potential and high productivity of the Groningen gasfield is unique. The extremely low-cost field is also unique in the sub-optimal manner in which it has been exploited over the whole of its forty year life to date. Its initial monopolistic situation in the West European energy economy created an opportunity for its development to be limited to production levels, whereby super-normal profits were generated on high value sales at the cost of consumers’ welfare.The breach in the monopoly, through competition from Soviet gas, readily able to undercut Groningen prices, posed a serious threat both to unit values and market expansion. Fortunately, the fortuitous 1973/4 international oil supplies and pricing crisis restored Groningen’s fortunes. Following the upward price adjustments for foreign sales, the stage was set for achieving high company profits and massive government revenues. Dutch society in a broader sense benefited only indirectly through government tax expenditures. Again, energy consumers’ welfare gains were ignored.This remains the essence of the situation, pending agreement on the introduction of the liberalized market to meet EU directives. Currently the Dutch gas regime and policy objectives are being adjusted to the requirements of operating in a liberalized market. These changes recognize: first, the invalidity of the government’s long-held fears for gas scarcity in such a way, that the earlier steps to restrict both foreign and national sales have been abandoned, and second, the need to reinstate Gasunie as an active, rather than a passive, player in the European gas market, in which other participants have subverted Gasunie’s earlier dominance.The second part of the paper will examine, whether and how these changes can be reconciled with the core elements of the Dutch gas policy, i.e. state and private revenues, co-ordination of supply and production, the ‘small fields policy’ and the balancing role of the Groningen field. The liberalization of the European gas market, together with changes in the pattern of supply and demand and stated Dutch policy objectives of energy policy may give rise to conflicts between the interests of the Dutch State, the owners of the field and, again, the consumers.

No one expected the energy transition to be without hiccups, and recently, those hiccups have been heard within and outside the oil and gas industry. Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global and author of several books, wrote how previous energy transitions evolved over the course of a century or more and did not “wholly displace the incumbent technologies.” Oil became the world’s No. 1 energy source in the 1960s, bumping coal from the top. “ … Yet we now use three times more coal than we did back then, with global consumption hitting a record high in 2022,” he noted. He continued, “By contrast, today’s transition is intended to unfold in little more than a quarter century and not be additive.” Yergin cited a 2021 paper by Jean Pisani-Ferry, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who wrote that moving too rapidly to net-zero emissions could precipitate “an adverse supply shock—very much like the shocks of the 1970s” and that it “is unlikely to be benign and policymakers should get ready for tough choices.” The outcome of those tough choices is becoming evident, both in policy and companies’ actions. For example, Equinor put an indefinite hold on its plans for a floating offshore wind farm, Trollvind. Initially planned to have an installed capacity of about 1 GW and annual production of 4.3 TWh, the electricity was to be used to run the Troll and Oseberg fields. The operator cited “challenges facing the broader offshore wind industry,” including how rising costs changed its original view that Trollvind would not require any financial support. “It is no longer a commercially sustainable project,” Equinor said in a statement. It added that the unavailability of preferred technology made the concept less viable and that the proposed timeline was not achievable to the level required to go forward. Shell recently pulled out of the Northern Endurance Partnership, Britain’s CCS project targeting industrial decarbonization. Another equity holder, National Grid, also withdrew from the project, dropping its plans to construct pipelines to transport the CO2 to the North Sea. The equity holdings were acquired by the remaining project partners, BP, Equinor, and TotalEnergies. The need for return on investments (ROI) was highlighted in a survey of global energy and natural resource executives by Bain & Co. in May. The responses showed executives believe their companies are outperforming the rest of the world in reducing emissions but expect the rate of decarbonization to slow down over the next few years. The surveyed companies expect to deploy about a quarter of their capital on new growth businesses in 2023, many of these focusing on low‑carbon technologies. The executives aren’t concerned about accessing capital for low-carbon businesses, but “need to ensure adequate returns on the investments.” Four out of five executives considered the ability to create acceptable returns on projects a main barrier to decarbonization. Customers demonstrate an unwillingness to pay—not universally, “but enough to make it hard to scale low‑ carbon businesses.” They look to government policy and regulatory support to help bridge the gap. Complicating ROI is how it is perceived in the eye of the investor. What investors value is not limited to the dividends they may receive. Individual and institutional investors are increasingly paying attention to ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria. Norway’s $1.4 trillion wealth fund, which invests Norwegian state revenues from oil and gas production, on 26 May said it would vote for shareholder proposals at Chevron and ExxonMobil to adopt a medium‑term Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target. Scope 3 refers to emissions not produced by the company itself or from its owned or controlled assets, but those it is indirectly responsible for, up and down its value chain. Last year, the fund said it would push the companies it invests in to cut GHG emissions to net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement. It emphasized that it would not divest from big emitters to achieve these targets and would instead be an “active shareholder” to effect change. “The easy way to cut down emissions is to sell out,” fund CEO Nicolai Tangen said. “But someone needs to own these companies and it does not solve the problem, quite the contrary.” When Shell CEO Wael Sawan discussed the company’s 2022 record profits of $39 billion, he said, “Profit without sustainability erodes our license to operate. Sustainability without profit erodes our shareholder support and financial capacity to play a meaningful part in the energy transition. We must continue to provide energy and do it with fewer emissions. We can only do this with the backing of our shareholders because it is their capital that enables us to invest in the energy transition.”

On 26 February 1921, the Soviet Union signed a «Treaty of Friendship» with Iran which was to pave the way for future relations between the two states. Although the Russians renounced various commercial and territorial concessions which the Tsarist government had exacted from Iran, they secured the insertion of two articles which prohibited the formation or residence in either country of individuals, groups, military forces which were hostile to the other party, and gave the Soviet Union the right to send forces into Iran in the event that a third party should attempt to carry out a policy of usurpation there, use Iran as a base for operations against Russia, or otherwise threaten Soviet frontiers. Furthermore, in 1927, the Soviet Union signed a «Treaty of Guarantee and Neutrality» with Iran which required the contracting parties to refrain from aggression against each other and not to join blocs or alliances directed against each other’s sovereignty. However, the treaty was violated by the Soviet Union’s wartime occupation of Iran, together with Britain and the United States. The violation was subsequently condoned by the conclusion of the Tripartite Treaty of Alliance of 29 January 1942, which permitted the Soviet Union to maintain troops in Iran for a limited period. Requiring restraint from propaganda, subversion and hostile political groups, the treaty would also appear to have been persistently violated by the Soviet Union: for example, the various radio campaigns of «Radio Moscow» and the «National Voice of Iran»; the financing and control of the Tudeh party; and espionage and rumour-mongering by Soviet officials in Iran. Whatever the Soviet’s original conception of this treaty may have been, they had since used it one-sidedly as a treaty in which both countries would be neutral, with one being «more neutral than the other». In effect, both the 1921 and 1927 treaties had been used as «a stick to beat the Iranians» whenever it suited the Soviets to do so, in propaganda and in inter-governmental dealings. During the Second World War, the treaty between the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and Iran, dated 29 January 1942 - and concluded some 5 months after the occupation of parts of Iran by allied forces, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union were entitled to maintain troops in Iran, but the presence of such troops was not to constitute a military occupation. Nonetheless, Soviet forces in the Northern provinces used their authority to prevent both the entry of officials of the Iranian Government and the export of agricultural products to other provinces. The treaty also required military forces to be withdrawn not later than six months after «all hostilities between the Allied Powers and Germany and her associates have been suspended by the conclusion of an armistice or on the conclusion of peace, whichever is the earlier». This entailed that the Soviet Union should have withdrawn its forces by March 1946, six months after the defeat of Japan. Meanwhile, however, there emerged in Iranian Azerbaijan, under Soviet tutelage, a movement for advanced provincial autonomy which developed into a separatist movement under a Communist-led «National Government of Azerbaijan». In 1945, Soviet forces prevented the Iranian army from moving troops into Azerbaijan, and also confined the Iranian garrison to barracks while the dissidents took forcible possession of key points. At the same time, Soviet troops prevented the entry of Iranian troops into the Kurdistan area, where, under Soviet protection, a Kurdish Republic had been set up by Qazi Mohammad. In 1946, after Iran had appealed to the Security Council, the Russians secured from the Iranian Prime Minister, Qavam es Saltaneh, a promise to introduce a bill providing for the formation of a Soviet-Iranian Oil Company to exploit the Northern oil reserves. In return, the Soviet Union agreed to negotiate over Azerbaijan: the Iranians thereupon withdrew their complaint to the Security Council, and Soviet forces left Azerbaijan by 9 May 1946. In 1955, when Iran was considering joining a regional defensive pact, which was later to manifest itself as the Baghdad Pact, the Soviet Government threatened that such a move would oblige the Soviet Union to act in accordance with Article 6 of the 1921 treaty. This was the «big stick» aspect of Soviet attempts to waylay Iranian membership of such a pact; the «carrot» being the conclusion in 1955 of a Soviet-Iranian «Financial and Frontier Agreement» by which the Soviets agreed to a mutually beneficial re-alignment of the frontier and to pay debts arising from their wartime occupation of Northern Iran. The Soviets continued their war of nerves against Iranian accession to the Pact by breaking off trade negotiations in October 1955 and by a series of minor affronts, such as the cancellation of cultural visits and minimal attendance at the Iranian National Day celebrations in Moscow. In a memorandum dated November 26, the Iranian Government openly rejected Soviet criticisms. Soviet displeasure was expressed officially, in the press and to private individuals. In the ensuing period, Soviet and Soviet-controlled radio stations continued to bombard their listeners with criticism of the Baghdad Pact, or CENTO as it later became. In early 1959, with the breakdown of the negotiations for a non-aggression pact, Iran-Soviet relations entered into a phase of propaganda warfare which intensified with the signature of the bilateral military agreement between Iran and the United States. The Soviet Union insisted that Iran should not permit the establishment of foreign military bases on its soil, and continued to threaten Iran despite the Shah’s assurance on this issue. Consequently, the Iranians denounced Articles 5 and 6 of the 1921 treaty, on the basis of which the Soviet Union was making its demands. Attempts by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to improve relations met with little success until September 1959, when Russia offered massive economic support on condition that Iran renounced its military agreements with the United States. This offer was rejected, and, as relations continued to become strained, the Soviets changed their demand to one neither for a written agreement that Iran would not allow its terrain to be used as a base of aggression nor for the establishment of foreign missile bases. The publication by the Soviet Union of the so-called «CENTO documents» did nothing to relieve the strain: the Soviet Union continued to stand out for a bilateral agreement with Iran, and the Shah, in consultation with Britain and the United States, continued to offer no more than a unilateral assurance. In July 1962, with a policy of endeavouring once more to improve relations, the Shah maintained his insistence on a unilateral statement, and the Soviet Government finally agreed to this. The Iranian undertaking was accordingly given and acknowledged on 15 September. The Instruments of ratification of the 1957 Agreements on Transit and Frontier Demarcation were exchanged in Moscow on 26 October 1962 and in Tehran on 20 December, respectively.

Summary The El Furrial field is one of Venezuela's major field assets and is operated by PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A.), the national oil company. Its current production of more than 450,000 BOPD makes it a giant oil field. Development of the field, which has an average reservoir depth of approximately 15,000 ft, is in its mature stages owing to implementation of high-pressure gas injection. PDVSA has consistently followed a forward planning approach related to reservoir management. Using high-angle deviation drilling techniques allows development wells to be strategically located by penetrating the reservoir at high angles to optimize production rate, extend well life, increase reserves per well, reduce operating expenses, and reduce total field development costs. A reservoir model was constructed and simulated with detailed reservoir stratigraphy to determine realistic potential of high-angle wells (HAW's). Five wells had been drilled as of June 2000, and the first four wells have proved the effectiveness of the design. The philosophy, modeling technique, well design considerations, problems encountered, well results, and economic criteria provide a clear understanding of the risk of this technology not previously used at this depth in Venezuela. The result was the first HAW in the deep, challenging environment of eastern Venezuela. Results show that optimization objectives can be attained with HAW's, mainly increasing per-well production rate, maximizing per-well recovery, and extending the breakthrough time of gas or water from pressure maintenance and enhanced oil recovery projects. Well results indicate that the geological and simulation modeling technique is reliable and accurate. A pilot program shows that HAW technology provides major advantages to increase production rate and reduce the overall number of wells needed to reach production objectives. However, the project also has experienced a number of unexpected drilling problems.1 The costs associated with the total project are significant, but more importantly, this program becomes very attractive because of the long-term benefits of decreased water-cut related to current water injection; decreased gas breakthrough owing to high-pressure gas injection, and fewer wells required to meet production goals. Technical contributions include the following:The modeling technique of applying detailed stratigraphy to a full-scale reservoir model is accurate if performed with the appropriate objectives in mind.The application of state-of-the-art drilling techniques to attain high angles at deep drilling depth is possible; however, drilling problems caused by formation instability require more study and experience.This method can be applied to other fields in the eastern Venezuelan basin currently under, or planned to be under, enhanced recovery programs and development programs. Introduction The El Furrial field is one of several giant fields found northwest of Maturin, Venezuela, in what is described as the El Furrial thrust trend (location shown in Fig. 1). The field was discovered in 1986 with the FUL-1 well, which established production from the Naricual formation. A late 1996 study, using a full-field simulation model of the El Furrial field, showed that problems associated with gas or water breakthrough in producing wells from high-pressure gas injection and water injection can be reduced with this technology. The potential to reduce problems comes from drilling infill wells at a high angle between the advancing gas and water fronts. High-pressure gas injection was started in 1998 and was justified, in part, by this work and other associated studies. The field produces from two formations, the Naricual and Los Jabillos, giving a total gross thickness of more than 1,500 ft. The primary 1,200-ft-thick Naricual formation is divided into three major stratigraphic sequences - the Superior (upper), Medio (middle), and Inferior (lower). Net-to-gross ratio is typically 80%. Philosophy PDVSA has consistently maintained reservoir models through the years to aid in reservoir management.2 To date, eight full-field and numerous sector-simulation models have been built. Optimization of the field began in 1996. During the study, it was noted that predictions of conventional vertical infill wells drilled into the structure had short production lives because of water or gas breakthrough. The review identified the possibility of placing well trajectories between the advancing water and gas fronts. One benefit was that the production rate from new wells could be increased; this indicated that the number of development wells could be reduced, saving investment costs. Thus, the following objectives were determined.Define optimization alternatives of the El Furrial field well-development scheme. The use of nonconventional well completions such as vertical large interval single completions (LISC) and high-angle completion (HAC) wells may present a higher potential for meeting production needs at a lower total development cost.Define the most reasonable completion configuration for new wells in El Furrial field. It is probable that the entire Naricual acts as a single reservoir unit, with at least partial vertical communication existing in the majority of the field caused by fault juxtaposition and limited fractures associated with faults. Therefore, single completions in all of Naricual Superior and Medio, or Naricual Medio and Inferior, may present viable completion alternatives.Provide technical support to the Venezuelan Ministry of Mines and Energy, which approves operation philosophy, development, and completion practices. The HAW program was different from the previous accepted philosophy, so technical support was necessary to permit the FUL-63 pilot test well. High-Angle Wells This work was split into two parts. The first was an evaluation of HAC wells as an alternative to current vertical-well strategies. This includes the possible alternative of LISC completions for all of Naricual Superior and Medio. The second was additional simulation cases to test the potential development plan with only HAC wells in a full-scale reservoir model.

Metal additive manufacturing has emerged as a promising technology with vast potential in the oil and gas industry. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited recognizes the significance of this technology and has initiated efforts to adopt metal additive manufacturing within its operations. This paper aims to provide an overview of the current state of metal additive manufacturing in the NNPC and highlight the challenges faced during its adoption process. The study goes on further to suggest strategies and future directions to ensure successful company-wide and industry-wide adoption and acceptance.

This research came to shed light on the economic cooperation between Iraq and Italy in the oil field during the year 1963-1979 and its impact on the progress of the development of relations between the two countries, since oil is an important factor in drawing up the bilateral relations between the two countries, as the oil dealings between the two countries at its inception during that period is not limited to being a factor Despite the fact that Italy had only a few stakes in some of Iraq's oil wells due to the global monopolistic companies' control over Iraq's oil, and after the establishment of the Iraqi National Oil Company and its control over Iraq's oil, Italy seriously sought to obtain oil concessions in Iraq through its most prominent company represented by Eni. But the difficulties it faced from the monopolistic companies and the Iraqi National Oil Company's refusal of the offer prevented that, but after that it wanted to stay away from investing in Iraq, but the circumstances that Italy went through made it return to search for cooperation with Iraq in the oil field, but not to obtain a concession only this time, but Purchasing crude oil in return for providing services and industrial cooperation to the Iraqi side. Italy had a positive attitude towards the nationalization of Iraqi oil in 1972.

This case presents the financial, political, and ethical dilemmas faced by an entrepreneur from London. His company, Shell Company of the Sudan Limited (Shell Sudan), is an indirectly wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell that no longer has operations in Sudan as of December 2008. Meanwhile, the Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC) has increased its exploitation of African oil in Darfur, Sudan. This paper introduces the reader to the new face that the black gold is giving to Chinese Foreign Trade Policy. The aim of the paper is to raise the debate about the world leadership that the emerging economy of China will develop during the XXI Century.

The study assessed the influence of safety culture on employee safety motivation and error behaviour in selected petroleum industries in the Niger-delta. Perceived process safety culture has significant impact on employees’ safety motivation and employee error behaviours in petroleum industries were the hypothesis tested for the study. Numerous empirical examinations states process safety culture failure as largely responsible for catastrophic occurrences in oil and gas platforms which has resulted in loss of lives, properties and caused diverse dangers to the environment. The study methodology is descriptive statistics utilising regression analysis. The field production / process plant operations workers of the Local/National and International Oil Companies were considered. The Population of the study: includes workers of the processing unit of ExxonMobil, Total Exploration & Production, Shell Petroleum Development Company, Agip Oil Company, Savannah Energy Public Limited Company (PLC), Network Exploration & Production, Frontier Oil, Aieteo Eastern Exploration & Production Company, Universal Energy Resources Ltd and Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Population consist of one thousand workers of the processing unit of ten companies with a proportion of five selected International Oil Companies (IOCs) and five Local Oil Companies (LOCs) selected by convenience sample techniques with only 816 valid responses. The sampling technique was purposive, convenience and quota sampling. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) IBM 20 was the software utilised for the analysis. The primary source of data collection was questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of Three (3) Sections and contains Thirty-seven (37) questions including the Socio-demographic data. Cronbach alpha coefficient from the reliability test carried out on the pre-test data showed an overall outcome of 0.872, which is considered very strong since and not far from 1.0. The study reveals that the Perceived process safety culture has no significant impact on employees’ safety motivation. Also, perceived process safety culture has a significant impact on employee error behaviours in petroleum industries. The study recommended that organisations should continue performing activities that keeps employees personally motivated. While employees must find ways to motivate themselves towards safety. Employee safety trainings should be organised to improve safety culture and avoid error behaviour.

Aegis Logistics Limited was incorporated in 1956 and its shares have been listed on theBombay Stock Exchange since 1978 and traded on the National Stock Exchange. AegisGroup plays a key role in India’s downstream oil and gas sector, and its flagship company,Aegis Logistic Limited, is India’s leading oil, gas, and chemical logistics company.Competition is a basic issue for every organization. Logistic companies also facing the samepressure of competition. In order to deal with the challenging business atmosphere, allprivate organizations seek new ways of business development. For logistic companies,environmental issues are highly important. Therefore, green policies have become a strategyfor them. Competitive levels of private companies may be affected by green policies as aresult of regulations regarding environmental concerns. Logistics may improve efficiencyand effectiveness such as using reusable containers and boxes instead of the paper cartonmay reduce waste and optimize product packaging; building a green warehouse lead toreduce the overall operating cost while using the hybrid engine in trucks may reduce carbonemissions and consume less gas. In today’s highly competitive environment, green logisticsissues are gaining high attention. Since it is an important part of supply chain managementand plays an important role in the improvement of a transport system. Logistics facilitates ingetting products and services as and when they are needed and desired to the customer. Itserves as a major enabler of the growth of trade and commerce in an economy because it ishelpful in economic transactions. In this paper, we studied and analysed the competitivestrategies followed in the green business Logistics industry and how it affects the greenbusiness environment of the company by considering the case of Aegis Logistics Limited.

Two large-scale environmental disasters in Assam's easternmost district Tinsukia, raised great passion and held much traction in local print, electronic and social media platforms in 2020. The National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) granted post-facto approval for opencast mining in Saleki Proposed Reserved Forest (PRF) under Dehing-Patkai Elephant Reserve in Assam. Later, the public sector company, Oil India Limited (OIL) reported a gas leak in Baghjan that resulted in a major blowout resulting in deaths and displacement in the area. In this article, we argue that these events constitute a tragic outcome of decades of appropriation of natural resources by the oil, tea and coal industry all of which depend on obsolete technologies of extraction. We focus on how this is happening in a place that has several disaffected, marginalised people who once relied on agriculture for their livelihoods. We argue that these two events are not aberrations in the global narrative of inter-governmental concerns for climate change. Instead, we believe that they are part of a global template of re-colonisation that continued long after the formal transfers of power that occurred in Africa and Asia in the 20th century.

The oil and gas industry in Africa is under mounting pressure to elevate operational efficiency and curb costs, even as supply chain challenges stemming from the pandemic persist. Additive manufacturing (AM) emerges as a unique solution with the potential to free segments of the industry from conventional supply chains. This study introduces a framework tailored to the distinctive challenges and opportunities of the African oil and gas sector, aiming to facilitate the effective adoption of metal AM. Considering constraints such as supply chain limitations, unstable electricity supply, remote locations, and limited manufacturing facilities, this framework intends to guide stakeholders in leveraging the transformative potential of AM technology while overcoming potential barriers. Leveraging a literature review, expert insights, and real-world scenarios, the study assesses the current state of metal AM in the oil and gas sector. The framework's applicability is demonstrated through a case study of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, while acknowledging the specific African context. It uncovers the existing state of metal AM in Africa and identifies various facilities along with their constraints. Encompassing domains such as prototyping, customized tooling, complex component fabrication, and spare part production, the framework addresses challenges like cultural shifts, quality control, and facility sustainability. It offers key stages encompassing technology assessment, workforce training, and strategic planning to drive the transition toward additive manufacturing. The adoption of metal AM in Africa's oil and gas sector holds the potential to significantly enhance operational efficiency and competitiveness, yet it necessitates overcoming multifaceted challenges. The proposed framework presents a strategic roadmap for harnessing this technology's transformative potential. By embracing innovation and surmounting region-specific obstacles, Africa's oil and gas industry can attain enhanced efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and adaptability

Purpose: The airline industry is one of the important sectors in all aspects of human life. The word ‘Aviation’ means the flying vehicles that come under airplanes, helicopters, and unmanned aircraft such as drones, UAVS, etc. This industry is mainly classified into two types, Airlines and Aviation industry. An Airlines business offers air travelling services for people or cargo, whereas the aviation industry is based on the working of defence systems, manufacturing, and training-based things. The modern airline industry is very important because of its globalized nature, helping to connect all continents, countries, and cultures. The aviation industry is a major backbone of every country's annual economy. Every country's international airports are major hubs for overseas trading around the world. It gives direction to a country's international competitiveness and global investments in tourism, IT, and infrastructure. The largest aircraft manufacturing companies in the airline sector are European player Airbus and US-based Boeing. Many airline companies work in national and international sectors, based on annual revenue the leading companies are American airlines, Delta airlines, Southwest airlines, China southern airlines, Ryanair airlines, KLN royal airlines, Turkish airlines, etc. IBS software is a leading provider of new-generation IT products in the logistics, transportation, and travel industry. The ultimate aim of IBS is to offer their clients maximum efficiency, improve revenue, increase safety, analyse growth and reduce total cost. Their service delivery area included the oil & gas sector, airport management, cruise lines, and tour operators. IBS software is a CMM Level 5 certified airline software development company having offices in America, Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Objective: IBS Software Pvt Ltd, a SaaS -related aviation software development company located in Techno Park, Trivandrum, Kerala is the subject of the company analysis case study. Design/Methodology/Approach: The pertinent data and specifics for this case study on IBS came from product papers that were released in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and business websites. Additional details have been given in white papers. Findings/Result: The study of this paper focuses on the company's products and services, Business strategy with their Partners and Alliances, Recruitment and training strategy of IBS Software, Corporate social responsibility, and analysis based on SWOT. Originality Value: The study provides a brief overview of IBS Software Private Limited products & services, In-depth knowledge about flight and staff application, flight repair solutions, customer convocation, License agencies, employee transit, and payload administrations. Type of Paper: Case Study.

Natural gas as one the most significant fossil fuels is playing a crucial role in national energy mix in different countries. Nevertheless, its applications have not been limited to energy providing, and has been used widely as the feed stock in production of different varieties of petrochemicals. So that most of new petrochemical complexes around the country are designed and constructed based on natural gas feed. Natural gas was produced as one of the byproducts of crude oil and mostly was burned. Gradually along with increasing volumes of extracted natural gas, planning on gathering and using associated gas resulted in more usage of natural gas in different sectors including petrochemical feed and fuel. Following the developments, National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) was established in 1965 as one of the subsidiaries of the petroleum ministry with initial capital of 25 million Rials. Since its establishment, NIGC has gradually achieved capabilities and managed to have access to various sources and facilities such as experts and efficient human force equipped with scientific and theoretical vision and knowledge, tools, equipment, machinery and various advanced workshops for implementing its operations proportionate with the economic and social development trend of the country, so that it can independently accomplish all the related tasks complying with the valid international acceptable standards. Today, NIGC as one of the 4 mail subsidiaries of petroleum ministry is supplying more than 70 percent of total energy in the country as well as the feed stock for tens of petrochemical and industrial complexed around the country. The company also is operating one of the biggest high pressure gas transmission and distribution networks of the world facilitating export, import, transit and swap of natural gas in the country. In the point of natural gas treatment and supply, the company has the first position in the Middle East and one of major gas companies around the world. At the time being, the number of the NIGC permanent staff is more than19000official staff and more than 19300 total staff

Unconventional energy sources have become increasingly important to the global energy mix. These include coal seam gas, shale gas and shale oil. The unconventional gas industry was pioneered in the United States and embraced following the first oil shock in 1973 (Rogers). As has been the case with many global resources (Hiscock), many of the same companies that worked in the USA carried their experience in this industry to early Australian explorations. Recently the USA has secured significant energy security with the development of unconventional energy deposits such as the Marcellus shale gas and the Bakken shale oil (Dobb; McGraw). But this has not come without environmental impact, including contamination to underground water supply (Osborn, Vengosh, Warner, Jackson) and potential greenhouse gas contributions (Howarth, Santoro, Ingraffea; McKenna). The environmental impact of unconventional gas extraction has raised serious public concern about the introduction and growth of the industry in Australia. In coal rich Australia coal seam gas is currently the major source of unconventional gas. Large gas deposits have been found in prime agricultural land along eastern Australia, such as the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales and the Darling Downs in Queensland. Competing land-uses and a series of environmental incidents from the coal seam gas industry have warranted major protest from a coalition of environmentalists and farmers (Berry; McLeish). Conflict between energy companies wanting development and environmentalists warning precaution is an easy script to cast for frontline media coverage. But historical perspectives are often missing in these contemporary debates. While coal mining and natural gas have often received “boosting” historical coverage (Diamond; Wilkinson), and although historical themes of “development” and “rushes” remain predominant when observing the span of the industry (AGA; Blainey), the history of unconventional gas, particularly the history of its environmental impact, has been little studied. Few people are aware, for example, that the first shale gas exploratory well was completed in late 2010 in the Cooper Basin in Central Australia (Molan) and is considered as a “new” frontier in Australian unconventional gas. Moreover many people are unaware that the first coal seam gas wells were completed in 1976 in Queensland. The first four wells offer an important moment for reflection in light of the industry’s recent move into Central Australia. By locating and analysing the first four coal seam gas wells, this essay identifies the roots of the unconventional gas industry in Australia and explores the early environmental impact of these wells. By analysing exploration reports that have been placed online by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources and Mines through the lens of environmental history, the dominant developmental narrative of this industry can also be scrutinised. These narratives often place more significance on economic and national benefits while displacing the environmental and social impacts of the industry (Connor, Higginbotham, Freeman, Albrecht; Duus; McEachern; Trigger). This essay therefore seeks to bring an environmental insight into early unconventional gas mining in Australia. As the author, I am concerned that nearly four decades on and it seems that no one has heeded the warning gleaned from these early wells and early exploration reports, as gas exploration in Australia continues under little scrutiny. Arrival The first four unconventional gas wells in Australia appear at the beginning of the industry world-wide (Schraufnagel, McBane, and Kuuskraa; McClanahan). The wells were explored by Houston Oils and Minerals—a company that entered the Australian mining scene by sharing a mining prospect with International Australian Energy Company (Wiltshire). The International Australian Energy Company was owned by Black Giant Oil Company in the US, which in turn was owned by International Royalty and Oil Company also based in the US. The Texan oilman Robert Kanton held a sixteen percent share in the latter. Kanton had an idea that the Mimosa Syncline in the south-eastern Bowen Basin was a gas trap waiting to be exploited. To test the theory he needed capital. Kanton presented the idea to Houston Oil and Minerals which had the financial backing to take the risk. Shotover No. 1 was drilled by Houston Oil and Minerals thirty miles south-east of the coal mining town of Blackwater. By late August 1975 it was drilled to 2,717 metres, discovered to have little gas, spudded, and, after a spend of $610,000, abandoned. The data from the Shotover well showed that the porosity of the rocks in the area was not a trap, and the Mimosa Syncline was therefore downgraded as a possible hydrocarbon location. There was, however, a small amount of gas found in the coal seams (Benbow 16). The well had passed through the huge coal seams of both the Bowen and Surat basins—important basins for the future of both the coal and gas industries. Mining Concepts In 1975, while Houston Oil and Minerals was drilling the Shotover well, US Steel and the US Bureau of Mines used hydraulic fracture, a technique already used in the petroleum industry, to drill vertical surface wells to drain gas from a coal seam (Methane Drainage Taskforce 102). They were able to remove gas from the coal seam before it was mined and sold enough to make a profit. With the well data from the Shotover well in Australia compiled, Houston returned to the US to research the possibility of harvesting methane in Australia. As the company saw it, methane drainage was “a novel exploitation concept” and the methane in the Bowen Basin was an “enormous hydrocarbon resource” (Wiltshire 7). The Shotover well passed through a section of the German Creek Coal measures and this became their next target. In September 1976 the Shotover well was re-opened and plugged at 1499 meters to become Australia’s first exploratory unconventional gas well. By the end of the month the rig was released and gas production tested. At one point an employee on the drilling operation observed a gas flame “the size of a 44 gal drum” (HOMA, “Shotover # 1” 9). But apart from the brief show, no gas flowed. And yet, Houston Oil and Minerals was not deterred, as they had already taken out other leases for further prospecting (Wiltshire 4). Only a week after the Shotover well had failed, Houston moved the methane search south-east to an area five miles north of the Moura township. Houston Oil and Minerals had researched the coal exploration seismic surveys of the area that were conducted in 1969, 1972, and 1973 to choose the location. Over the next two months in late 1976, two new wells—Kinma No.1 and Carra No.1—were drilled within a mile from each other and completed as gas wells. Houston Oil and Minerals also purchased the old oil exploration well Moura No. 1 from the Queensland Government and completed it as a suspended gas well. The company must have mined the Department of Mines archive to find Moura No.1, as the previous exploration report from 1969 noted methane given off from the coal seams (Sell). By December 1976 Houston Oil and Minerals had three gas wells in the vicinity of each other and by early 1977 testing had occurred. The results were disappointing with minimal gas flow at Kinma and Carra, but Moura showed a little more promise. Here, the drillers were able to convert their Fairbanks-Morse engine driving the pump from an engine run on LPG to one run on methane produced from the well (Porter, “Moura # 1”). Drink This? Although there was not much gas to find in the test production phase, there was a lot of water. The exploration reports produced by the company are incomplete (indeed no report was available for the Shotover well), but the information available shows that a large amount of water was extracted before gas started to flow (Porter, “Carra # 1”; Porter, “Moura # 1”; Porter, “Kinma # 1”). As Porter’s reports outline, prior to gas flowing, the water produced at Carra, Kinma and Moura totalled 37,600 litres, 11,900 and 2,900 respectively. It should be noted that the method used to test the amount of water was not continuous and these amounts were not the full amount of water produced; also, upon gas coming to the surface some of the wells continued to produce water. In short, before any gas flowed at the first unconventional gas wells in Australia at least 50,000 litres of water were taken from underground. Results show that the water was not ready to drink (Mathers, “Moura # 1”; Mathers, “Appendix 1”; HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 21-24). The water had total dissolved solids (minerals) well over the average set by the authorities (WHO; Apps Laboratories; NHMRC; QDAFF). The well at Kinma recorded the highest levels, almost two and a half times the unacceptable standard. On average the water from the Moura well was of reasonable standard, possibly because some water was extracted from the well when it was originally sunk in 1969; but the water from Kinma and Carra was very poor quality, not good enough for crops, stock or to be let run into creeks. The biggest issue was the sodium concentration; all wells had very high salt levels. Kinma and Carra were four and two times the maximum standard respectively. In short, there was a substantial amount of poor quality water produced from drilling and testing the three wells. Fracking Australia Hydraulic fracturing is an artificial process that can encourage more gas to flow to the surface (McGraw; Fischetti; Senate). Prior to the testing phase at the Moura field, well data was sent to the Chemical Research and Development Department at Halliburton in Oklahoma, to examine the ability to fracture the coal and shale in the Australian wells. Halliburton was the founding father of hydraulic fracture. In Oklahoma on 17 March 1949, operating under an exclusive license from Standard Oil, this company conducted the first ever hydraulic fracture of an oil well (Montgomery and Smith). To come up with a program of hydraulic fracturing for the Australian field, Halliburton went back to the laboratory. They bonded together small slabs of coal and shale similar to Australian samples, drilled one-inch holes into the sample, then pressurised the holes and completed a “hydro-frac” in miniature. “These samples were difficult to prepare,” they wrote in their report to Houston Oil and Minerals (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 10). Their program for fracturing was informed by a field of science that had been evolving since the first hydraulic fracture but had rapidly progressed since the first oil shock. Halliburton’s laboratory test had confirmed that the model of Perkins and Kern developed for widths of hydraulic fracture—in an article that defined the field—should also apply to Australian coals (Perkins and Kern). By late January 1977 Halliburton had issued Houston Oil and Minerals with a program of hydraulic fracture to use on the central Queensland wells. On the final page of their report they warned: “There are many unknowns in a vertical fracture design procedure” (HOMA, “Miscellaneous Pages” 17). In July 1977, Moura No. 1 became the first coal seam gas well hydraulically fractured in Australia. The exploration report states: “During July 1977 the well was killed with 1% KCL solution and the tubing and packer were pulled from the well … and pumping commenced” (Porter 2-3). The use of the word “kill” is interesting—potassium chloride (KCl) is the third and final drug administered in the lethal injection of humans on death row in the USA. Potassium chloride was used to minimise the effect on parts of the coal seam that were water-sensitive and was the recommended solution prior to adding other chemicals (Montgomery and Smith 28); but a word such as “kill” also implies that the well and the larger environment were alive before fracking commenced (Giblett; Trigger). Pumping recommenced after the fracturing fluid was unloaded. Initially gas supply was very good. It increased from an average estimate of 7,000 cubic feet per day to 30,000, but this only lasted two days before coal and sand started flowing back up to the surface. In effect, the cleats were propped open but the coal did not close and hold onto them which meant coal particles and sand flowed back up the pipe with diminishing amounts of gas (Walters 12). Although there were some interesting results, the program was considered a failure. In April 1978, Houston Oil and Minerals finally abandoned the methane concept. Following the failure, they reflected on the possibilities for a coal seam gas industry given the gas prices in Queensland: “Methane drainage wells appear to offer no economic potential” (Wooldridge 2). At the wells they let the tubing drop into the hole, put a fifteen foot cement plug at the top of the hole, covered it with a steel plate and by their own description restored the area to its “original state” (Wiltshire 8). Houston Oil and Minerals now turned to “conventional targets” which included coal exploration (Wiltshire 7). A Thousand Memories The first four wells show some of the critical environmental issues that were present from the outset of the industry in Australia. The process of hydraulic fracture was not just a failure, but conducted on a science that had never been tested in Australia, was ponderous at best, and by Halliburton’s own admission had “many unknowns”. There was also the role of large multinationals providing “experience” (Briody; Hiscock) and conducting these tests while having limited knowledge of the Australian landscape. Before any gas came to the surface, a large amount of water was produced that was loaded with a mixture of salt and other heavy minerals. The source of water for both the mud drilling of Carra and Kinma, as well as the hydraulic fracture job on Moura, was extracted from Kianga Creek three miles from the site (HOMA, “Carra # 1” 5; HOMA, “Kinma # 1” 5; Porter, “Moura # 1”). No location was listed for the disposal of the water from the wells, including the hydraulic fracture liquid. Considering the poor quality of water, if the water was disposed on site or let drain into a creek, this would have had significant environmental impact. Nobody has yet answered the question of where all this water went. The environmental issues of water extraction, saline water and hydraulic fracture were present at the first four wells. At the first four wells environmental concern was not a priority. The complexity of inter-company relations, as witnessed at the Shotover well, shows there was little time. The re-use of old wells, such as the Moura well, also shows that economic priorities were more important. Even if environmental information was considered important at the time, no one would have had access to it because, as handwritten notes on some of the reports show, many of the reports were “confidential” (Sell). Even though coal mines commenced filing Environmental Impact Statements in the early 1970s, there is no such documentation for gas exploration conducted by Houston Oil and Minerals. A lack of broader awareness for the surrounding environment, from floral and faunal health to the impact on habitat quality, can be gleaned when reading across all the exploration reports. Nearly four decades on and we now have thousands of wells throughout the world. Yet, the challenges of unconventional gas still persist. The implications of the environmental history of the first four wells in Australia for contemporary unconventional gas exploration and development in this country and beyond are significant. Many environmental issues were present from the beginning of the coal seam gas industry in Australia. Owning up to this history would place policy makers and regulators in a position to strengthen current regulation. The industry continues to face the same challenges today as it did at the start of development—including water extraction, hydraulic fracturing and problems associated with drilling through underground aquifers. Looking more broadly at the unconventional gas industry, shale gas has appeared as the next target for energy resources in Australia. Reflecting on the first exploratory shale gas wells drilled in Central Australia, the chief executive of the company responsible for the shale gas wells noted their deliberate decision to locate their activities in semi-desert country away from “an area of prime agricultural land” and conflict with environmentalists (quoted in Molan). Moreover, the journalist Paul Cleary recently complained about the coal seam gas industry polluting Australia’s food-bowl but concluded that the “next frontier” should be in “remote” Central Australia with shale gas (Cleary 195). It appears that preference is to move the industry to the arid centre of Australia, to the ecologically and culturally unique Lake Eyre Basin region (Robin and Smith). 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Each community’s title deed carries the indelible blood stains of our ancestors. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 2)IntroductionAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term coalition comes from the Latin coalescere or ‘coalesce’, meaning “come or bring together to form one mass or whole”. Coalesce refers to the unity affirmed as something grows: co – “together”, alesce – “to grow up”. While coalition is commonly associated with formalised alliances and political strategy in the name of self-interest and common goals, this paper will draw as well on the broader etymological understanding of coalition as “growing together” in order to discuss the Australian government’s recent changes to land rights legislation, the 2007 Emergency Intervention into the Northern Territory, and its decision to use Indigenous land in the Northern Territory as a dumping ground for nuclear waste. What unites these distinct cases is the role of the Australian nation-state in asserting its sovereign right to decide, something Giorgio Agamben notes is the primary indicator of sovereign right and power (Agamben). As Fiona McAllan has argued in relation to the Northern Territory Intervention: “Various forces that had been coalescing and captivating the moral, imaginary centre were now contributing to a spectacular enactment of a sovereign rescue mission” (par. 18). Different visions of “growing together”, and different coalitional strategies, are played out in public debate and policy formation. This paper will argue that each of these cases represents an alliance between successive, oppositional governments - and the nourishment of neoliberal imperatives - over and against the interests of some of the Indigenous communities, especially with relation to land rights. A critical stance is taken in relation to the alterations to land rights laws over the past five years and with the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention, hereinafter referred to as the Intervention, firstly by the Howard Liberal Coalition Government and later continued, in what Anthony Lambert has usefully termed a “postcoalitional” fashion, by the Rudd Labor Government. By this, Lambert refers to the manner in which dominant relations of power continue despite the apparent collapse of old political coalitions and even in the face of seemingly progressive symbolic and material change. It is not the intention of this paper to locate Indigenous people in opposition to models of economic development aligned with neoliberalism. There are examples of productive relations between Indigenous communities and mining companies, in which Indigenous people retain control over decision-making and utilise Land Council’s to negotiate effectively. Major mining company Rio Tinto, for example, initiated an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Policy platform in the mid-1990s (Rio Tinto). Moreover, there are diverse perspectives within the Indigenous community regarding social and economic reform governed by neoliberal agendas as well as government initiatives such as the Intervention, motivated by a concern for the abuse of children, as outlined in The Little Children Are Sacred Report (Wild & Anderson; hereinafter Little Children). Indeed, there is no agreement on whether or not the Intervention had anything to do with land rights. On the one hand, Noel Pearson has strongly opposed this assertion: “I've got as much objections as anybody to the ideological prejudices of the Howard Government in relation to land, but this question is not about a 'land grab'. The Anderson Wild Report tells us about the scale of Aboriginal children's neglect and abuse" (ABC). Marcia Langton has agreed with this stating that “There's a cynical view afoot that the emergency intervention was a political ploy - a Trojan Horse - to sneak through land grabs and some gratuitous black head-kicking disguised as concern for children. These conspiracy theories abound, and they are mostly ridiculous” (Langton). Patrick Dodson on the other hand, has argued that yes, of course, the children remain the highest priority, but that this “is undermined by the Government's heavy-handed authoritarian intervention and its ideological and deceptive land reform agenda” (Dodson). WhitenessOne way to frame this issue is to look at it through the lens of critical race and whiteness theory. Is it possible that the interests of whiteness are at play in the coalitions of corporate/private enterprise and political interests in the Northern Territory, in the coupling of social conservatism and economic rationalism? Using this framework allows us to identify the partial interests at play and the implications of this for discussions in Australia around sovereignty and self-determination, as well as providing a discursive framework through which to understand how these coalitional interests represent a specific understanding of progress, growth and development. Whiteness theory takes an empirically informed stance in order to critique the operation of unequal power relations and discriminatory practices imbued in racialised structures. Whiteness and critical race theory take the twin interests of racial privileging and racial discrimination and discuss their historical and on-going relevance for law, philosophy, representation, media, politics and policy. Foregrounding contemporary analysis in whiteness studies is the central role of race in the development of the Australian nation, most evident in the dispossession and destruction of Indigenous lands, cultures and lives, which occurred initially prior to Federation, as well as following. Cheryl Harris’s landmark paper “Whiteness as Property” argues, in the context of the US, that “the origins of property rights ... are rooted in racial domination” and that the “interaction between conceptions of race and property ... played a critical role in establishing and maintaining racial and economic subordination” (Harris 1716).Reiterating the logic of racial inferiority and the assumption of a lack of rationality and civility, Indigenous people were named in the Australian Constitution as “flora and fauna” – which was not overturned until a national referendum in 1967. This, coupled with the logic of terra nullius represents the racist foundational logic of Australian statehood. As is well known, terra nullius declared that the land belonged to no-one, denying Indigenous people property rights over land. Whiteness, Moreton-Robinson contends, “is constitutive of the epistemology of the West; it is an invisible regime of power that secures hegemony through discourse and has material effects in everyday life” (Whiteness 75).In addition to analysing racial power structures, critical race theory has presented studies into the link between race, whiteness and neoliberalism. Roberts and Mahtami argue that it is not just that neoliberalism has racialised effects, rather that neoliberalism and its underlying philosophy is “fundamentally raced and produces racialized bodies” (248; also see Goldberg Threat). The effect of the free market on state sovereignty has been hotly debated too. Aihwa Ong contends that neoliberalism produces particular relationships between the state and non-state corporations, as well as determining the role of individuals within the body-politic. Ong specifies:Market-driven logic induces the co-ordination of political policies with the corporate interests, so that developmental discussions favour the fragmentation of the national space into various contiguous zones, and promote the differential regulation of the populations who can be connected to or disconnected from global circuits of capital. (Ong, Neoliberalism 77)So how is whiteness relevant to a discussion of land reform, and to the changes to land rights passed along with Intervention legislation in 2007? Irene Watson cites the former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, who opposed the progressive individual with what he termed the “failed collective.” Watson asserts that in the debates around land leasing and the Intervention, “Aboriginal law and traditional roles and responsibilities for caring and belonging to country are transformed into the cause for community violence” (Sovereign Spaces 34). The effects of this, I will argue, are twofold and move beyond a moral or social agenda in the strictest sense of the terms: firstly to promote, and make more accessible, the possibility of private and government coalitions in relation to Indigenous lands, and secondly, to reinforce the sovereignty of the state, recognised in the capacity to make decisions. It is here that the explicit reiteration of what Aileen Moreton-Robinson calls “white possession” is clearly evidenced (The Possessive Logic). Sovereign Interventions In the Northern Territory 50% of land is owned by Indigenous people under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (ALRA) (NT). This law gives Indigenous people control, mediated via land councils, over their lands. It is the contention of this paper that the rights enabled through this law have been eroded in recent times in the coalescing interests of government and private enterprise via, broadly, land rights reform measures. In August 2007 the government passed a number of laws that overturned aspects of the Racial Discrimination Act 197 5(RDA), including the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 and the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (Township Leasing) Bill 2007. Ostensibly these laws were a response to evidence of alarming levels of child abuse in remote Indigenous communities, which has been compiled in the special report Little Children, co-chaired by Rex Wild QC and Patricia Anderson. This report argued that urgent but culturally appropriate strategies were required in order to assist the local communities in tackling the issues. The recommendations of the report did not include military intervention, and instead prioritised the need to support and work in dialogue with local Indigenous people and organisations who were already attempting, with extremely limited resources, to challenge the problem. Specifically it stated that:The thrust of our recommendations, which are designed to advise the NT government on how it can help support communities to effectively prevent and tackle child sexual abuse, is for there to be consultation with, and ownership by the local communities, of these solutions. (Wild & Anderson 23) Instead, the Federal Coalition government, with support from the opposition Labor Party, initiated a large scale intervention, which included the deployment of the military, to install order and assist medical personnel to carry out compulsory health checks on minors. The intervention affected 73 communities with populations of over 200 Aboriginal men, women and children (Altman, Neo-Paternalism 8). The reality of high levels of domestic and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities requires urgent and diligent attention, but it is not the space of this paper to unpack the media spectacle or the politically determined response to these serious issues, or the considered and careful reports such as the one cited above. While the report specifies the need for local solutions and local control of the process and decision-making, the Federal Liberal Coalition government’s intervention, and the current Labor government’s faithfulness to these, has been centralised and external, imposed upon communities. Rebecca Stringer argues that the Trojan horse thesis indicates what is at stake in this Intervention, while also pinpointing its main weakness. That is, the counter-intuitive links its architects make between addressing child sexual abuse and re-litigating Indigenous land tenure and governance arrangements in a manner that undermines Aboriginal sovereignty and further opens Aboriginal lands to private interests among the mining, nuclear power, tourism, property development and labour brokerage industries. (par. 8)Alongside welfare quarantining for all Indigenous people, was a decision by parliament to overturn the “permit system”, a legal protocol provided by the ALRA and in place so as to enable Indigenous peoples the right to refuse and grant entry to strangers wanting to access their lands. To place this in a broader context of land rights reform, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 2006, created the possibility of 99 year individual leases, at the expense of communal ownership. The legislation operates as a way of individualising the land arrangements in remote Indigenous communities by opening communal land up as private plots able to be bought by Aboriginal people or any other interested party. Indeed, according to Leon Terrill, land reform in Australia over the past 10 years reflects an attempt to return control of decision-making to government bureaucracy, even as governments have downplayed this aspect. Terrill argues that Township Leasing (enabled via the 2006 legislation), takes “wholesale decision-making about land use” away from Traditional Owners and instead places it in the hands of a government entity called the Executive Director of Township Leasing (3). With the passage of legislation around the Intervention, five year leases were created to enable the Commonwealth “administrative control” over the communities affected (Terrill 3). Finally, under the current changes it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of Aboriginal people will be able to access individual land leasing. Moreover, the argument has been presented that these reforms reflect a broader project aimed at replacing communal land ownership arrangements. This agenda has been justified at a rhetorical level via the demonization of communal land ownership arrangements. Helen Hughes and Jenness Warin, researchers at the rightwing think-tank, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), released a report entitled A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities, in which they argue that there is a direct casual link between communal ownership and economic underdevelopment: “Communal ownership of land, royalties and other resources is the principle cause of the lack of economic development in remote areas” (in Norberry & Gardiner-Garden 8). In 2005, then Prime Minister, John Howard, publicly introduced the government’s ambition to alter the structure of Indigenous land arrangements, couching his agenda in the language of “equal opportunity”. I believe there’s a case for reviewing the whole issue of Aboriginal land title in the sense of looking more towards private recognition …, I’m talking about giving them the same opportunities as the rest of their fellow Australians. (Watson, "Howard’s End" 1)Scholars of critical race theory have argued that the language of equality, usually tied to liberalism (though not always) masks racial inequality and even results in “camouflaged racism” (Davis 61). David Theo Goldberg notes that, “the racial status-quo - racial exclusions and privileges favouring for the most part middle - and upper class whites - is maintained by formalising equality through states of legal and administrative science” (Racial State 222). While Howard and his coalition of supporters have associated communal title with disadvantage and called for the equality to be found in individual leases (Dodson), Altman has argued that there is no logical link between forms of communal land ownership and incidences of sexual abuse, and indeed, the government’s use of sexual abuse disingenuously disguises it’s imperative to alter the land ownership arrangements: “Given the proposed changes to the ALRA are in no way associated with child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities […] there is therefore no pressing urgency to pass the amendments.” (Altman National Emergency, 3) In the case of the Intervention, land rights reforms have affected the continued dispossession of Indigenous people in the interests of “commercial development” (Altman Neo-Paternalism 8). In light of this it can be argued that what is occurring conforms to what Aileen Moreton-Robinson has highlighted as the “possessive logic of patriarchal white sovereignty” (Possessive Logic). White sovereignty, under the banner of benevolent paternalism overturns the authority it has conceded to local Indigenous communities. This is realised via township leases, five year leases, housing leases and other measures, stripping them of the right to refuse the government and private enterprise entry into their lands (effectively the right of control and decision-making), and opening them up to, as Stringer argues, a range of commercial and government interests. Future Concerns and Concluding NotesThe etymological root of coalition is coalesce, inferring the broad ambition to “grow together”. In the issues outlined above, growing together is dominated by neoliberal interests, or what Stringer has termed “assimilatory neoliberation”. The issue extends beyond a social and economic assimilationism project and into a political and legal “land grab”, because, as Ong notes, the neoliberal agenda aligns itself with the nation-state. This coalitional arrangement of neoliberal and governmental interests reiterates “white possession” (Moreton-Robinson, The Possessive Logic). This is evidenced in the position of the current Labor government decision to uphold the nomination of Muckaty as a radioactive waste repository site in Australia (Stokes). In 2007, the Northern Land Council (NLC) nominated Muckaty Station to be the site for waste disposal. This decision cannot be read outside the context of Maralinga, in the South Australian desert, a site where experiments involving nuclear technology were conducted in the 1960s. As John Keane recounts, the Australian government permitted the British government to conduct tests, dispossessing the local Aboriginal group, the Tjarutja, and employing a single patrol officer “the job of monitoring the movements of the Aborigines and quarantining them in settlements” (Keane). Situated within this historical colonial context, in 2006, under a John Howard led Liberal Coalition, the government passed the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA), a law which effectively overrode the rulings of the Northern Territory government in relation decisions regarding nuclear waste disposal, as well as overriding the rights of traditional Aboriginal owners and the validity of sacred sites. The Australian Labor government has sought to alter the CRWMA in order to reinstate the importance of following due process in the nomination process of land. However, it left the proposed site of Muckaty as confirmed, and the new bill, titled National Radioactive Waste Management retains many of the same characteristics of the Howard government legislation. In 2010, 57 traditional owners from Muckaty and surrounding areas signed a petition stating their opposition to the disposal site (the case is currently in the Federal Court). At a time when nuclear power has come back onto the radar as a possible solution to the energy crisis and climate change, questions concerning the investments of government and its loyalties should be asked. As Malcolm Knox has written “the nuclear industry has become evangelical about the dangers of global warming” (Knox). While nuclear is a “cleaner” energy than coal, until better methods are designed for processing its waste, larger amounts of it will be produced, requiring lands that can hold it for the desired timeframes. For Australia, this demands attention to the politics and ethics of waste disposal. Such an issue is already being played out, before nuclear has even been signed off as a solution to climate change, with the need to find a disposal site to accommodate already existing uranium exported to Europe and destined to return as waste to Australia in 2014. The decision to go ahead with Muckaty against the wishes of the voices of local Indigenous people may open the way for the co-opting of a discourse of environmentalism by political and business groups to promote the development and expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to coal and oil for energy production; dumping waste on Indigenous lands becomes part of the solution to climate change. During the 2010 Australian election, Greens Leader Bob Brown played upon the word coalition to suggest that the Liberal National Party were in COALition with the mining industry over the proposed Mining Tax – the Liberal Coalition opposed any mining tax (Brown). Here Brown highlights the alliance of political agendas and business or corporate interests quite succinctly. Like Brown’s COALition, will government (of either major party) form a coalition with the nuclear power stakeholders?This paper has attempted to bring to light what Dodson has identified as “an alliance of established conservative forces...with more recent and strident ideological thinking associated with free market economics and notions of individual responsibility” and the implications of this alliance for land rights (Dodson). It is important to ask critical questions about the vision of “growing together” being promoted via the coalition of conservative, neoliberal, private and government interests.Acknowledgements Many thanks to the reviewers of this article for their useful suggestions. 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Langton, Marcia. “It’s Time to Stop Playing Politics with Vulnerable Lives.” Opinion. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 Nov. 2007: 2. McAllan, Fiona. “Customary Appropriations.” borderlands ejournal 6.3 (2007). 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no3_2007/mcallan_appropriations.htm>. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “The Possessive Logic of Patriarchal White Sovereignty: The High Court and the Yorta Yorta Decision.” borderlands e-journal 3.2 (2004). 1 Aug. 2007 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/moreton_possessive.htm>. ———. “Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous Representation.” Whitening Race. Ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 75-89. Norberry, J., and J. Gardiner-Garden. Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006. Australian Parliamentary Library Bills Digest 158 (19 June 2006). Ong, Aihwa. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. 75-97.Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd. ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Rio Tinto. "Rio Tinto Aboriginal Policy and Programme Briefing Note." June 2007. 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.aboriginalfund.riotinto.com/common/pdf/Aboriginal%20Policy%20and%20Programs%20-%20June%202007.pdf>. Roberts, David J., and Mielle Mahtami. “Neoliberalising Race, Racing Neoliberalism: Placing 'Race' in Neoliberal Discourses.” Antipode 42.2 (2010): 248-257. Stringer, Rebecca. “A Nightmare of the Neocolonial Kind: Politics of Suffering in Howard's Northern Territory Intervention.” borderlands ejournal 6.2 (2007). 22 Nov. 2010 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol6no2_2007/stringer_intervention.htm>.Stokes, Dianne. "Muckaty." n.d. 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.timbonham.com/slideshows/Muckaty/>. Terrill, Leon. “Indigenous Land Reform: What Is the Real Aim of Land Reform?” Edited version of a presentation provided at the 2010 National Native Title Conference, 2010. Watson, Irene. “Sovereign Spaces, Caring for Country and the Homeless Position of Aboriginal Peoples.” South Atlantic Quarterly 108.1 (2009): 27-51. Watson, Nicole. “Howard’s End: The Real Agenda behind the Proposed Review of Indigenous Land Titles.” Australian Indigenous Law Reporter 9.4 (2005). ‹http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AILR/2005/64.html>.Wild, R., and P. Anderson. Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarie: The Little Children Are Sacred. Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. Northern Territory: Northern Territory Government, 2007.

In 2019, Mattel introduced a series of Barbie dolls in connection with National Geographic which included a Polar Marine Biologist, an Entomologist, a Wildlife Photojournalist, and a mostly "made from recycled ocean-bound plastic" Barbie ("Mattel Launches Barbie Loves the Ocean") followed in 2021. One year later, the company issued an "Eco-Leadership Team" composed of a Conservation Scientist, a Renewable Energy Engineer, Chief Sustainability Officer, and Environmental Advocate. This can be understood as an attempt to introduce children to the urgency of ecological issues and communicating to them the importance of research into climate change in an age-appropriate manner. Yet, despite the pedagogical opportunities the dolls might offer, I argue that their introduction and presentation primarily represents an instance of greenwashing, "the act or practice of making a product, policy, activity, etc. appear to be more environmentally friendly or less environmentally damaging than it really is" (Merriam-Webster). In order to support my thesis, I will analyse four issues: first, I will have a closer look at the way in which the four "Eco-Leadership" dolls express ecological concerns. I will then turn to the material Barbie is made of, plastic, and examine its environmental impact together with Mattel's "The Future of Pink Is Green" campaign. Next, I will discuss the conspicuous consumption Barbie models, focussing on the Malibu Dream House. I will address how this is entangled with settler colonialism in the fourth and final part. Eco-Leadership Barbie? The "Eco-Leadership" set, billed as "2022 Career of the Year" collection, consists of four dolls. They come in a cardboard box so that the toys are not immediately visible, and their accessories are stored in a paper bag inside. On the one hand, this makes the dolls less appealing, depriving the potential consumers of visual pleasure. On the other hand, this generates an element of suspense, much like a wrapped present. In keeping with Mattel's slogan "The Future of Pink Is Green", the colour pink is toned down, even though each doll sports at least one accessory in this colour. The toys are sold as a team, thus perhaps suggesting that "eco-leadership" is a collaborative project, which departs from the emphasis on individualism otherwise suggested by Barbie packaging. In their promotional material, Mattel mentions that all of the professional fields the dolls represent are male-dominated ("Barbie Eco-Leadership Team"). The combination of the careers featured makes a telling statement about Mattel's framing of ecological issues. First, there is a Conservation Scientist with binoculars and a notebook, implying that she is undertaking research on larger animals, presumably endangered species. Such a focus on mammals tends to downplay structural issues and the "slow violence" that affects ecological systems, as Arno Hölzer has argued (65). She is joined by a Renewable Energy Engineer with a solar panel, referencing the least controversial form of "green energy". Significantly, this is the classic blond Barbie. Together, these two dolls suggest that science and technology will find solutions to current ecological crises, global warming, et cetera (not that such issues are explicitly mentioned). The third doll is advertised as Chief Sustainability Officer. "She works with a company or organization to make sure their actions and products are economically, environmentally and socially sustainable", as Mattel puts it ("Barbie Eco-Leadership Team"). Here, businesses are portrayed not as the source of environmental pollution, but as part of the solution to the problem. While this is not entirely false, this particular approach to environmental issues is severely limited, firmly remaining within a neoliberal, capitalist ideology. It reflects what Dan Brockington and Rosaleen Duffy, following Sklair, term "mainstream conservation", which "proposes resolutions to environmental problems that hinge on heightened commodity production and consumption" (4). In this context, a company's promotion of "ethical consumption" "achieves its ethically positive results by not counting various aspects of the production and consumption of its commodities" (9). Finally, there's the Environmental Advocate – not activist (the term was probably too controversial). She is always mentioned last. Her poster reads: "Barbie loves the earth", possibly the most inane ecological slogan ever devised. It is made of plastic. Acquainting children with ecological issues in an age-appropriate manner is an important task. Playing environmental advocate, or scientist, might certainly be more educational in terms of ecological issues than many of the other career options the "I can be anything" series features. But the absence of a politician in the set, for instance, speaks volumes. The "recipe" for sustainability the dolls embody only requires a heavy dose of science and technology, whipped up by well-meaning entrepreneurship, with a little love for the planet sprinkled on top. One gets a prettier picture if one looks at the toys from different perspectives. The group is rather diverse, with a Black Conservation Scientist, an Environmental Advocate of Asian descent, and a Chief Sustainability Officer that might be Latinx, and "curvy". Again, though, there is a glaring omission. Indigenous people are not included, despite the fact that, due to environmental racism, they are among the communities most dramatically affected by environmental pollution. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., who coined the term "environmental racism," defined it as racial discrimination in environmental policy-making, enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste disposal and the siting of polluting industries … , [and] the history of excluding people of color from the mainstream environmental groups, decision-making boards, commissions, and regulatory bodies. (Chavis 3) The consequences for Native Americans were and are severe. By 1999, Winona LaDuke notes, 317 reservations … [were] threatened by environmental hazards … . Reservations have been targeted as sites for 16 proposed nuclear waste dumps [and] [o]ver 100 … toxic waste [sites] … . There have been 1,000 atomic explosions on Western Shoshone land in Nevada, making the Western Shoshone the most bombed nation on earth. (LaDuke 2-3) The absence of an Indigenous doll in the Barbie "Eco-Leadership Team" is also noteworthy considering the long history of Native American and First Nations resistance to habitat destruction and environmental degradation, from nineteenth-century Lakota Little Thunder and Anishnaabe leader Wabunoquod (LaDuke 3, 5) to the #NoDAPL movement (Gilio-Whitaker 1-13). Following Robin Wall Kimmerer, one could even argue that sustainability, or "beneficial relations between people and the environment", are integral to Native (here: Potawatomi) culture (Kimmerer 6). On a very different note, any ecological consideration of Barbie dolls must also address their material properties. According to Mattel, the four dolls "are made from recycled plastic … , wear clothing made from recycled fabric and are certified CarbonNeutral® products" ("Barbie Eco-Leadership Team"). This does not apply to the heads and the hair, however – arguably the most distinctive parts of the toys. This had already been the case with the "Barbie Loves the Ocean" series ("Mattel Launches Barbie Loves the Ocean") – apparently, this is not an issue that can easily be fixed. In other words, only some components of the dolls are manufactured from recycled plastic. Further, in 2022, over 175 different Barbie dolls circulated, of which at least 166 were not made from recycled plastic (Google). To speak of "eco-leadership" is thus rather misleading. To further examine this, I want to have a closer look at the materials the dolls consist of. Life in Plastic… For a while now, it has become common knowledge that "life in plastic" might not be so "fantastic" after all, Aqua's song notwithstanding. Plastic pollution of the oceans is a huge problem, killing birds, whales, and other seaborne animals; so are non-biodegradable plastic landfill, neo-colonial waste export, the detrimental health effects of phthalates in plastic, and so on (Moore, Freinkel). But what James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello call the uneven "distribution of violence" during the transformation of fossil fuel into plastic is less well known. Oil production and transport are frequently militarised, they show, with company interests taking precedence over human rights (173-74, 176). Heavily guarded pipelines cut through traditional grazing and farming areas, endangering people's livelihoods as well as local ecosystems (Marriott and Minio-Paluello 176, 178-79). To the consumers who buy the plastic produced from this oil, such violence is invisible, not least because production processes and their environmental consequences are actively screened from view by fossil fuel companies and local governments (173-74). "Although these social and environmental impacts are inherent within its constitution, the plastic product in its uniformity is seemingly wiped clean of all that violence and disruption", the authors conclude (181). Where these matters have rarely been discussed in academic research on Barbie, they garnered significant public interest around the time the movie was released in 2023. That the film itself received the Environmental Media Association (EMA) gold seal (Plastic Pollution Coalition) did not lay such concerns to rest. "After the movie frenzy fades, how do we avoid tonnes of Barbie dolls going to landfill?", Alan Pears asked in The Conversation. Waste Online highlighted the "Not-So-Pretty Side of Plastic Toys", Tatler headlined "How Barbie is making climate change worse", and in Medium, Eric Young even aimed to show "How To Save The World from the Toxicity of Barbie!" (with an exclamation rather than a question mark). Based on a 2022 study by Sarah Levesque, Madeline Robertson, and Christie Klimas, Pears noted that "every 182 gram doll caused about 660 grams of carbon emissions, including plastic production, manufacture and transport" (Pears 2). According to Duke Ines, CEO of Lonely Whale, a campaign devoted to protecting the oceans, "80% of all toys end up in a landfill, incinerators, or the ocean" (Mendez 3). Discarded toys make up around 6% of all plastic in landfills (Levesque et al. 777). There are estimates that, by 2030, in the US emissions from plastic production will supersede those from coal (Pears 2). Mattel seems to have recognised the problem. In 2021, the company announced its "The Future of Pink Is Green" campaign as part of its "goal to use 100% recycled, recyclable or bio-based plastic materials and packaging by 2030" ("Mattel Launches" 2). The efforts include educational vlogger episodes and Mattel PlayBack, a toy return program aimed at recycling materials in toy production. With Barbie, this is difficult, though. As Dorothea Ruffin and others have noted, the dolls are composed of different kinds of plastics. The heads consist of hard vinyl, with water-based spray paint used for the eyes; the torso is manufactured from ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene-styrene), the arms of EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate), and the legs of polypropylene and PVC (polyvinyl chloride) (Ruffin 2). This makes recycling difficult, perhaps even unfeasible. So in effect, I agree with environmental educator Kristy Drutman that Mattel's eco-friendly self-presentation currently qualifies as greenwashing (Mendez 2). With Lyon's and Maxwell's description of the practice as "selective disclosure of positive information about a company's environmental or social performance, without full disclosure of negative information on these dimensions, so as to create an overly positive corporate image" (9) as reference point, it becomes clear that Mattel's strategy perfectly fits this pattern. Their recycling efforts concern only a small number of the Barbie dolls they produce, and even those are only partly fashioned from salvaged material. Both the release of the "Eco-Leadership" set and the "The Future of Pink Is Green" campaign seem designed primarily to bolster the company's reputation. Conspicuous Consumption and the Malibu Dream House A central component of the problem is the scale of plastic toy consumption, as Levesque et al. observe. Mattel sells around 60 million Barbies annually (Ruffin 2). This amounts to over one billion dolls since 1959 (ETX Daily UP 2). What the scientists call "the overproduction and purchase of toys" (Levesque et al. 791) testifies to the continued centrality of "conspicuous consumption", the demonstrative, wasteful squandering of resources which, as Thorstein Veblen already noted in 1899, signifies and produces social distinction (Veblen 53; cf. 43-72). As he argued, "an unremitting demonstration of ability to pay" (Veblen 54) was and is central for upholding not only one's social standing, but also one's self-esteem. This is at the core of Mattel's business model: stimulating repeated purchases by issuing and marketing ever-new, "must-have" dolls, clothing, and other accessories. These tend to normalise an upper-class lifestyle, as Barbie's sports car, horse, and dream house attest. The Malibu Dream House, part of the Barbie universe since 1962, plays a specific role in this context. It symbolises fun, conspicuous leisure, and glamour. With its spectacular beaches, its exclusiveness, and its proximity to Hollywood celebrity culture, Malibu represents the apex of social aspiration for many people. Houses are also sexy, as Marjorie Garber observes in Sex and Real Estate. "Real estate today has become a form of yuppie pornography. … Buyers are entering the housing market with more celerity (and more salaciousness?) than they once entered the marriage market" (Garber 3, 4). The prominence of the house in the Barbie movie is thus not incidental. Malibu is among the most expensive locations in the US. The median property value is US$4.25m. Due to its beachfront location, its "iconic design" and "cultural value", local brokerage Ruby Home estimated that "the price of the doll's DreamHouse [could be] an eye-watering $10 million" (McPherson). With the understatement typical of the profession, the author of the article writes: "unsurprisingly, Barbie’s home would only be available to high-net-worth buyers". This does more than reinforce classism. The richest segment of the global population also has an inordinately large carbon footprint and overall negative impact on climate change. According to Oxfam, the richest 1% produced 16% of global consumption emissions in 2019. The propagation of Malibu Dream House living thus does not exactly rhyme with "eco- leadership". Barbie and Settler Colonialism The wasteful, environmentally detrimental lifestyle of the very wealthy is part and parcel of US settler colonialism. Unlike other forms of colonialism, settler colonialism attempts to replace the Indigenous population. The term does not only signify a devastating past but names an ongoing process, since Native people have not in fact "disappeared". Lorenzo Veracini puts it succinctly: "settler colonialism is not finished" (Veracini 68-94). As Patrick Wolfe famously wrote, "'settler-colonial state' is Australian [and US] society's primary structural characteristic rather than merely a statement about its origins… . Invasion is a structure not an event" (163). Malibu is traditional Chumash territory. The name derives from the Ventureño Chumash word Humaliwo, meaning "where the surf sounds loudly" (Sampson). The Chumash were forcibly deprived of their land by the Spanish Mission system in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Deborah A. Miranda has movingly detailed the traumatic effects of this violence in her memoir Bad Indians. But the Chumash are not gone. In fact, the Wishtoyo Chumach Foundation, whose mission it is to "protect and preserve the culture, history, and lifeways of Chumash and Indigenous peoples, and the environment everyone depends on", runs Chumash Village, "with a goal of raising awareness of Chumash people's historical relationship and dependence upon the natural environment as a maritime people", right in Malibu (Wishtoyo Chumach Foundation). None of this is mentioned by Mattel or the Greta Gerwig movie, which does not only signal a missed opportunity to demonstrate "eco-leadership". Rather, such an omission is typical for settler colonial culture. In order to buttress their claim to the land, settlers try to write Indigenous people out of North American history through a strategy White Earth Ojibwe scholar Jean O'Brien has called "firsting", that is, claiming the European settlers were there first, they "discovered" something, etc. The opening of the movie is a classic example. To the voiceover of "since the beginning of time – since the first little girl ever existed", it shows not Native inhabitants, but European American children in vaguely historical, possibly nineteenth century settler clothing. At other points, Barbie's and Ken's cowboy outfits, their glaring whiteness, references to Davy Crockett and, as Stentor Danielson mentioned in their presentation on "Barbieland's Fantasy Ecology: Terra Nullius on the Pink Beach" at the conference "'You Can Be Anything': Imagining and Interrogating Barbie in Popular Culture", to the Black Hills aka Mount Rushmore, clearly mark them as settlers. J.M. Bacon has coined the term "colonial ecological violence" to reference the ways in which environmental degradation and settler colonialism are inextricably intertwined (59). Effectively combatting environmental pollution thus also requires addressing settler colonial economic, social, and cultural structures. As Dina Gilio-Whitaker has forcefully argued, the success of environmental justice movements in the US, especially vis-à-vis the fossil fuel industry, may depend on building coalitions with Indigenous activists. Some of the most promising examples actually come from California, where beaches have been protected from corporate development because sacred Native sites would have been negatively affected (148). "It may well be that organizing around Native land rights holds the key to successfully transitioning from a fossil-fuel energy infrastructure to one based on sustainable energy", Gilio-Whitaker concludes (149). "Effective partnerships with allies in the environmental movement will provide the best defence for the collective well-being of the environment and future generations of all Americans, Native and non-Native alike" (162). This is a far cry from any policy Mattel has so far advertised, not to mention implemented. Conclusion In different respects, the promise of "Eco-Leadership" Barbies rings hollow. Not only do they suggest an extremely limited understanding of environmental concerns and challenges, Mattel's breezy pronouncements are clearly at odds with its simultaneous boosting of conspicuous consumption, let alone the focus on financial profit generally characteristic for its managerial decisions. In light of the enormous environmental problems generated by the manufacturing and disposal of the dolls, the waste-intensive upper-class lifestyle Barbie outfits and accessories promote, and finally the de-thematising of capitalism and settler colonialism both in Mattel's Barbie discourses and the 2023 Barbie movie, the company's attempts to project an ecologically conscious image seem primarily designed to capitalise on an increasing awareness of ecological problems in Mattel's target audience, rather than constituting a serious reconsideration of its unsustainable corporate strategies. References Bacon, J.M. "Settler Colonialism as an Eco-Social Structure and the Production of Colonial Ecological Violence." Environmental Sociology 5.1 (2019): 59-69. Brockington, Dan, and Rosaleen Duffy. "Introduction: Capitalism and Conservation: The Production and Reproduction of Biodiversity Conservation." In Capitalism and Conservation, eds. Dan Brockington and Rosaleen Duffy. 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Introduction 1. In an era of globalization, international trade is inevitable. When we walk into a supermarket and find South American bananas, Malaysian rubber products, Brazilian coffee, we simply experience the impact of global trade. Global trade allows all countries around the world to publicise their markets and to supply goods and services that otherwise would not have been open to the domestic economy. As all goods and services are available at relatively cheaper prices in the international market, therefore domestic market becomes more competitive. People have got choices for competitive products. Therefore, the difference in the prices of goods of the foreign economy and domestic economy results in international trade. 2. Why nations trade with each other ? Not a single nation alone can generate all the goods and services for its households in today’s world of limitless desires. There is an unequal distribution of factors of production over the countries of the world. Countries of the world differ from each other in terms of natural resources, technology, entrepreneurial and managerial skills which determine the ability of the country concerned, at the lowest cost of production, to manufacture goods and services. For example, South Korea can manufacture cars or microelectronic products effectively in comparison with any other nation in the world, similarly Malaysia could produce rubber and palm oil more efficiently. The ability to manufacture these products, such as electronics or rubber, is much greater than their ability to consume these goods within the country so that they can sell these goods at comparatively cheaper prices to other countries around the world. Similarly, India and Brazil can import certain products from South Korea and Malaysia at lower prices and can in exchange, import Brazilian coffee or Indian textiles at a lower price. Therefore, generally trade benefits all the countries of the world provided it is free trade. If one country has a belief in free trade and the other beliefs in the opposite, only the previous one will end practicing free trade and suffering in the end. Economists say that trade conflicts safeguard economic interests and are advantageous to the local market, but critics claim that they ultimately hurt local companies, consumers, and the economy in long run. Protectionist policies always harm the concept of globalization. According to the World Commission on the social dimension of globalization (2004). “Globalisation should benefit all the countries and should raise the welfare of all people throughout the world”. Advocates of protectionist view put arguments in favour of restrictions of the trade like the expansion of the home market, keeping money at home, counteracting foreign low wages, defence or national security arguments, protection of infant industry, anti-dumping arguments, and balance of payment arguments. Trade restrictions are of two types; tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers. The tariff barrier is the most common barrier to trade. It is the tax or duties that one country imposes on exported or imported goods. There are various types of tariff barriers in international trade. If the tariff is imposed based on the physical weight of some goods, imported or exported, called a specific tariff. • If a tariff is imposed on the value of some goods, imported or exported is called “Ad Valorem tariff”. • If different rates of the tariff are imposed on different countries called discriminatory tariffs. • If the same rates of a tariff are imposed on different countries, called non-discriminatory tariff’. • If the main purpose of imposing a tariff is to produce revenue, called a revenue tariff. • And the most commonly used tariff is the Protective tariff. if the tariff is imposed mainly to protect domestic industries from foreign competitions are called the protective tariff 4. Followers of the protectionist policy argue that tariff imposition has two impacts; revenue increases after the imposition of tariff and home production increases which is called protective effect but if other countries retaliate in the same manner, the trade war is inevitable. A situation of trade war erupts when one nation or economy strike back against another economy by imposing trade barriers. The application of trade restrictions is not a new concept in international trade. If we study the background of the global trade war, we find that countries frequently used trade restrictions in global trade. The situation was aggravated after the second world war. Most of the countries were intentionally devaluing their currency to increase their export and minimise imports. This was also the reason for the currency war between countries. 5. We can divide the world trade in the pre-Bretton Woods and post Bretton Woods period. An efficient international monetary system is very essential for the smooth functioning and expansion of international trade. From the early 19th century until the first world war, the era was regarded as a period of internationalism. Most of the major industrialised nations of the world started participating in world trade. After the second world war and the hectic slump and currency war that followed it all the countries of the world wished to return to normalcy. Two causes were responsible for this wish: - • Reconstruction of the economies ravaged by the war. • To end the currency war. As far as the second cause is concerned many countries or the trading partners of the world started devaluating its currency to improve the conditions of their BOP. This resulted in a trade war between nations. Therefore, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA, members of 44 countries met to discuss these problems and to find realistic solutions for them. This conference proposed the establishment of: - • The International Monetary Fund (IMF), to help member countries to meet their BOP deficit problem. • IBRD, to reconstruct and develop economies of member countries. • An International Trade Organisation (ITO), to solve the problem of international trade and proper liberalisation of it. 6. However, the proposal for the International Trade Organisation did not materialise and the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) was formed. The GATT was established in 1948 with a big and important objective of “free trade” and “no trade war”. Its main purpose was to remove trade restrictions which sooner or later converts into a trade war. The first seven rounds of GATT were focussed on the removal of trade barriers only. Despite these discussions in several rounds of GATT, it couldn’t provide a useful forum for discussion on international trade issues. 7. The 8th round of GATT is called Uruguay Round which started in 1986. Member countries negotiated in the areas of Tariffs, Non-Tariff Measures, Tropical Production, Natural resource-based products, Agriculture, GATT articles, Safeguards, Multilateral trade negotiation agreement, Subsidies, Disputes Settlement, Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPPS), Trade-Related Investments measures (TRIMS), Functioning of GATT system (FOGS). Despite serious discussion on these issues’ agreement could not be reached and member countries kept on using trade and non-trade barriers on each other. 8. COVID-19 pandemic, which started in March 2020, has adversely affected global trade. As per WTO statistics, a 3% fall in the volume of merchandise (export and import) trade is seen in the first quarter of 2020. Lockdown in many economies of the world aggravated the problem and declines are historically large. Strict social distancing and majors and restrictions on travel and transport adversely affected the service sector of the world economy which is the main contributor to gross domestic product (GDP) of many countries. Therefore, the economic recovery from the COVID situation is highly uncertain. This situation might give a boost to the global trade war which will be the endeavour during the research to be found out and a description of the same has been covered in Chapter 3. The research has tried to reveal how the pandemic has crippled the world economy and aggravating the pre-existing problem of the trade war. The recent trade war between China and the USA is an apt example. Recent Examples of Trade War​​ 9. Since the year 2018 world has been witnessing trade conflict which was earlier currency conflict between the USA and its economic partners mainly the EU and China. But in this conflict US’s all-weather friend Canada and Mexico were also hit. However, retaliation by other countries has been very limited. In March 2018, the United States announced the imposition of additional tariffs under Section 232 on imports of steel (25%) and aluminium (10%) from China to the United States. This might harm the Chinese economy as China is the major contributor of crude and finished steel in the world. 10. In the same month, the US President announced his strategy to endorse restrictions against China over its Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policies which were severely affecting its stakeholders. In this sanction, the US raised tariffs by 24 to 25% on selected Chinese products which were valued to the tune of approximately $50 billion. By adopting the policy of quid pro quo China on 01 April responded with 25% tariffs on $50 billion in US exports on various American products, like agriculture, pork, and cars. On 3rd April 2018, the US administration released a list of 1,333 goods equivalent to $50 billion in trade, which it said would enforce a 25% tariff. 11. These Chinese products mainly belong to the category of important sectors like robotics, rail and shipping, information technology, health care, and medicine, and high-technology. China retaliated and published a list of 106 products on which 25% tariffs were imposed and its value was worth $50 billion in trade. Thus, quid pro quo tactics kept ongoing between China and the US. The US plans to tax $50 billion worth of Chinese imports was replied with threats by China to impose tariffs on American products worth $50 billion. China announced to hit back with additional taxes on American chemicals, automobiles, and other products. Interestingly all these 106 American products are produced in those regions of the US where President Trump enjoys great support of his people. Earlier this year both countries signed the first phase of the trade agreement to reduce trade pressures between them, which last year weakened global growth and scaled-down business investment around the world. But due to the blame game over the pandemic, progress has been derailed. 12. Apart from the above, the subsidy has been one of the major causes of dispute amongst countries of the world. According to the WTO agreement on agriculture, developed economies had to reduce their subsidies by 21% in six years and developing countries by 12% in 10 years. Recently restriction on Indian agriculture produce by US, EU, Canada, Brazil, and Japan has been imposed in August 2020. They have questioned that India is not following the WTO peace clause for surpassing the limit on support or, subsidy it can render to its peasants. In the platform of WTO, the ceiling for subsidy is 10% of the value of the produce. India provided the WTO with details that the value of its rice production in 2018 was $43.6 billion and subsidies were worth just $5 billion. Subsidies have therefore remained a major bone of contention between the various countries of the world, but there is one peace arrangement in the WTO that protects the WTO members’ food procurement program for developing countries from taking action in the event of a violation of the subsidy cap. It will also be a litmus test to observe if in circumstances like the ongoing pandemic, WTO members grant food security pre-eminence to emerging economies or whether developed nations are pursuing market entree. Globalisation has reached a few obstructions in recent times, following decades of surges in world trade, worldwide tourism, and global cooperation, as some of the development achieved in the past has been undone by the re-emergence of patriotism and protectionism. The COVID-19 pandemic is predicted to trigger an unprecedented deterioration in global trade after trade growth decelerated dramatically in 2019, owing in huge part to trade conflict between the United States and China. As per the forecasts of the WTO, merchandise business is going to plunge between 12.98% and 31.88% this year, depending on how easily the coronavirus is controlled and trade will return to pre-crisis levels. According to the WTO Director-General, Roberto Azevêdo, the swift and robust rebound is only possible through the focus on free trade. Global markets have to be kept open and predictable, in addition to promoting a more desirable business climate. 13. Though before the onset of the pandemic, the Indian economy was not affected much by the ongoing trade conflict between the USA and China because of the combined effect of the pandemic and trade war India’s GDP shrunk by 23.9% in the first quarter of FY 2020-21. In the first quarter, the worst-hit industry was construction, which contracted by 50 percent. The hotel industry contracted by 47%, production by 39.3%, and mining by 23.3%. Agriculture, which posted a 3.4 percent rise, was the only industry that managed to survive the recession. The economy is believed to have suffered the most during the June quarter as a result of the nationwide lockdown. 14. In January 2019, as the trade war was raging, India also placed anti-dumping duties on more than 99 Chinese goods to protect its domestic markets, such as anti-dumping duties on chemicals, petrochemicals, fabrics, yarn, pharmaceutical equipment, rubber, and steel products. As a follower of protectionist policy Indian government also imposes anti-dumping duty on imports of steel products, an alloy of aluminium. The total value of duty imposed was $13.07 per ton to $ 173.1 per ton, which is a big amount. China, Vietnam, South Korea for five years in June 2020. India needs to take some major steps and reforms to bounce back its economy back on track. 15. Review of Literature… To complete the research number of books, literatures in the forms of articles, journals, independent views of various economists have been reviewed and referred. Books…. ​Various books reviewed and which have contributed in the course of the research include the following: - (a) ​Trade War Are Class War: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace by Mathew C. Klein and Michael Pettis published by Yale University Press, May 19, 2020. ​The roots of today’s trade wars are traced by Klein and Pettis to decisions taken over the past thirty years by policymakers and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States. The authors include a coherent narrative in this book that demonstrates how the growing injustice of class wars is a challenge to the global economy and international peace, and what the ways ahead are. (b)​ Has China Won by Kishore Mahbubani published by PublicAffairs, March 2020. ​​The author of this book aims to provide an insight into the trade war between the USA and China. He also claims that China is not as is claimed, an expansionist country. By extending its trade, diplomacy and military might in the region, it secures its national interest. But his view appears to be skewed toward the Chinese target. (c)​ Superpower Showdown: How the Battle between Trump and Xi Threaten a New Cold War by Bob Davis and Lingling Wei published by HarperCollins, June 9, 2020. ​As told by two Wall Street Journal reporters, one based in Washington, D.C., the other in Beijing, who had more access to the decision-makers in the White House and China’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound than anyone else, this is the inside story of the US-China trade war, how ties between these superpowers unravelled, darkening prospects for global peace and prosperity. Over the seven years, they have collaborated on writing for the Wall Street Journal, Davis and Wei have conducted hundreds of interviews with government and business officials in both nations. They explain how we have reached this turning point and look at where we might be going, evaluating U.S.-China ties. (d) ​COVID-19 Challenges for the Indian Economy: Trade and Foreign Policy Effects by EEPCINDIA and AIC, 2020. ​​A study entitled ‘COVID-19: Challenges for the Indian Economy – Trade and Foreign Policy Consequences’ was developed by the ASEAN-India Centre(AIC) Research and Information System for Developing Countries(RIS) in collaboration with the Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC), it presents freshly written 40 primary comments on India’s trade and foreign policy challenges raised by this crisis and the way forward by Indian professors, economists, and practitioners. (e ) ​Global Economic Effects of COVID-19 by Congressional Research Service August 2020 by James K. Jackson, Martin A. Weiss, and Rebecca M. Nelson.​ It’s a Congressional Research paper published to analyse the effects of the pandemic on the world economy particularly, the USA. It’s a crystal gazing done by two seasoned economists and gives an excellent perspective of ongoing trade and its likely directions post COVID-19. Research is full of authentic data, facts and Pictures gathered from governmental and non-governmental sources. (f) ​Trade is Not a Four-Letter Word: How Six Everyday Products make the case for Trade, January 2014 by Fred Hochberg published by Simon and Schuster. ​Fred P. Hochberg breaks down colourful and convincing real-world examples through the prism of six traditional American items to reject the common myths and misunderstandings surrounding trade. Mr. Hochberg illustrates the story of America’s most unexpected business partnerships by using six commonly consumed American products; the taco salad, the minivan, the banana, the iPhone, the college degree, and the HBO series Game of Thrones – thus sharing the fundamentals of trade that everybody should know. (g) ​Indian Economy by Dutta and Sundhram published by S. Chand, New Delhi, 66th Revised Edition.​This book analyses structure of the Indian Economy, national income, study of human and natural resources in the context of economic development, pattern of foreign trade of India, broad cross-section of the Indian economy. Chapter 6 of this book deals with foreign trade in India and its balance of payment position which is significant for my study. (h) ​International Economics by Francis Cherunilam published by Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Company Limited, New Delhi, Third Edition. The author is a professor at the School of Management Studies at Cochin University of Science and Technology. This book deals with the conflicting national interest, international economic relations, and solutions of conflicting interests. Chapter 3 of this book shows the picture of international trade. Chapter 9th and 10th clear the picture of free trade versus protection and different types of trade barriers. (i) ​International Economics by H.G. Mannur published by Vikas Publishing House Private Limited, Second Revised Edition. ​The author of this book, H.G. Mannur paid his gratitude to the school of social sciences of the university of science in Penang Malaysia, which provided him a great opportunity to learn about the International economics of Malaysia related to the world. This book is dealing with the International economy of Malaysia which is the highest foreign trade-dependent economy. Chapter 1 explains why do nations trade with each other. Chapter 7 of this book deals with obstacles to trade and trade restrictions. (j) ​International Economics by Dominick Salvatore by Wiley, January 1, 2014. ​​Dominick Salvatore, the author of international economics is an American economist. This book presents theories of international economics and its relevance through real-world examples and applications. Articles. ​ Several articles on the subject relating to the global trade, trade conflict and its effects on world have been written by many noted columnists and authors. Apart from that in last 10 months number of organisations and research bodies also carried out the analysis and likely effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world trade and ongoing trade conflict. Articles from publications such as ‘The Economics Times’, ‘Business Today’, ‘The Hindu’, ‘National Council of Applied Economic Research’, ‘BBC Economic Research’, ‘Economic Research and Statistics Division (ERSD)’, ‘Investopedia’ and ‘Business Insider’ form a part of the literature review for the research. In addition to the articles and journals by various writers certain data were also taken from the governmental and non-governmental reports like United Nations Conference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD), WTO Press releases and Economic Survey of India. The existing literature provides great insight into the reasons of trade between the countries, trade conflict and its catalyst and how an unforeseen event like the pandemic brings the entire world to a standstill where even largest and strongest have no solution. There are number of literature and research available which brings out many scenarios where the current trade conflict can go. Besides, a large number of research papers have also been written about the likely recovery of the world trade in various different scenarios. Study of some of has definitely given an insightful perspective on the subject. There is, however a void in the research writings on the subject from Indian government’s concerned ministry like Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Trade and Commerce and Ministry of Agriculture. The Economic Survey of India was the only document where authentic data could have been found but that too was almost six to eight months old. The updated analytical facts and data from the ministry’s sites will go a long way in helping a researcher for his work. A critical study of books and articles mentioned above has assisted in the research to address the issues identified. ​16. Statement of Problem.​ The research seeks to investigate: - (a) ​How the current global trade war (GTW) has impacted the nations having a considerable share in world trade? (b) ​How has the Global Trade War (GTW) impacted the Indian economy? (c)​What are the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Global Trade War? (d) ​What are the likely effects of the COVID -19 pandemic on the Indian economy? 17. Statement of Problem.​ The research seeks to investigate: - (a) ​How the current global trade war (GTW) has impacted the nations having a considerable share in world trade? (b) ​How has the Global Trade War (GTW) impacted the Indian economy? (c)​What are the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Global Trade War? (d) ​What are the likely effects of the COVID -19 pandemic on the Indian economy? 18. Objectives of the Study. The specific objectives of the study are as under: - (a) ​To study the reasons and effects of the global trade war on nations having a major share in world trade. (b) ​To study the effects of COVID-19 pandemic and GTW on international trade with specific emphasis on the Indian economy. 19. Hypothesis The research is intended to deliberate and validate the following hypothesis: - (a) ​Global Trade War has severely impacted nations from having a major share in world trade. (b) ​India has not been affected much by the Global Trade War. (c)​COVID-19 pandemic is going to aggravate the Global Trade War. (d) ​Indian economy will be adversely affected by the ongoing pandemic. 20. The relevance of the Study… This study will contribute to academia with an in-depth insight into the existent trend of international trade and trade war. The present study will evaluate the effect of COVID-19 on international trade and its role in aggravating trade war. Besides, this study will also endeavour to furnish both analysis and suggestions towards: - (a) ​Trend of global trade and reasons behind trade war. (b) ​Likely direction of international trade post-COVID-19. (c)​Its impact on the Indian economy and recommendations for future economic policies. 21. Research Methodology Owing to the current and contemporary nature of the topic, research was based on the primary and secondary method of data collection wherein the number of books, open-source articles, internet blogs, periodicals, and research papers were referred and perused. Apart from the same reports and analysis of both governmental and non-governmental agencies, which were available in the open domain, were also accessed during the research. To support the arguments, an online public opinion, based on close-ended questionnaire, was be taken through Google forms. The survey questionnaire was analysed based on responses using Likert Scale. Non-random convenient sampling was used for selection of participants. A total of 114 respondents took part in the survey. 22. Organisation of the Research Research has been completed under five chapters. Headings of the chapters and their broad contents have been covered in succeeding paragraphs. (a) ​Chapter 1: Introduction and Research Methodology. In this chapter background of global trade, particularly after World War II, the role of WTO for free and fair trade amongst member nations along with research methodology have been covered in detail. (b) ​Chapter 2: Background of Global Trade War and Situation up to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemics. In this chapter issues like background of trade war, currency war and current state of global trade amidst ongoing trade conflict between the USA and China has been covered in detail. Apart from the same it has also been brought out in this chapter that which are the countries and which all products and services have been severely affected. All the affected nations are adopting their own policies to deal with the current situation of COVID-19 and ripples of trade dispute. Same have also been brought forward in this chapter. (c)​Chapter 3: Likely Directions of Global Trade War post-COVID-19 pandemics. COVID-19 pandemic has added a new dimension to the way nations were doing trade with each other, particularly in the light of disruption in production, supply chain, unpredicted market, and labour issues. Apart from that, it has severely affected the ongoing global trade war. The revival of the economy is incumbent on medical success in finding the vaccine for the disease. In this chapter likely direction of the trade war has been discussed in details. Apart from the foregoing, long and short term effects of the pandemic on global trade have also been covered in this chapter. (d) ​Chapter 4: Impact of Global Trade War and COVID-19 pandemics on the Indian Economy. The Indian economy was not affected much by the global trade war but since the onset of a pandemic, the combined effect of COVID-19 and trade war has started affecting the Indian economy. Apart from the same in this chapter impact on export and import capability of India during pandemic times have also been covered in detail. Recent development at Galwan valley in Eastern Ladakh which includes the steps taken by India and its likely implications on the trade between India and China has also been covered in this chapter. In the end an analysis of the Online survey with the help of Google form has been covered to check the hypothesis. (e)​ Chapter 5: Way Ahead for the Indian Economy, Recommendations and Conclusion. ​In continuation of the previous chapter, this chapter contains nthe state of global trade in the current times along with certain recommendations which can be followed to have a fair world trade. During COVID-19 pandemic the Indian government has taken large number of fiscal measures to control to the damage and bring the economy back on track and same have been covered in great details in this chapter. Apart from that actions which Indian government should take to minimise the impact of trade dispute between other nations have also been recommended. In last way ahead for the Indian economy has been recommended.

Introduction 2021 was the year that NFTs got big—not just in value but also in terms of the cultural consciousness. When digital artist Beeple sold the portfolio of his 5,000 daily images at Christie’s for US$69 million, the art world was left intrigued, confused, and outraged in equal measure. Depending on who you asked, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seemed to be either a quick cash-grab or the future of the art market (Bowden and Jones; Smee). Following the Beeple sale, articles started to appear indicating that the film industry was abuzz for NFTs. Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith was quick to announce that he planned to release his horror film Killroy Was Here as an NFT (Alexander); in September 2021 the James Bond film No Time to Die also unveiled a series of collectibles to coincide with the film’s much-delayed theatrical release (Natalee); the distribution and collectible platforms Vuele, NFT Studios, and Mogul Productions all emerged, and the industry rumour mill suggests more start-ups are en route (CurrencyWorks; NFT Studios; NewsBTC). Blockchain disciples say that the technology will solve all the problems of the Internet (Tewari; Norton; European Business Review); critics say it will only perpetuate existing accessibility and equality issues (Davis and Flatow; Klein). Those more circumspect will doubtless sit back until the dust settles, waiting to see what parts of so-called web3 will be genuinely integrated into the architecture of the Internet. Pamela Hutchinson puts it neatly in terms of the arts sector: “the NFT may revolutionise the art market, film funding and distribution. Or it might be an ecological disaster and a financial bubble, in which few actual movies change hands, and fraudsters get rich from other people’s intellectual property” (Hutchinson). There is an uptick in the literature around NFTs and blockchain (see Quiniou; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel); however, the technology remains unregulated and unstandardised (Yeung 212-14; Dimitropoulos 112-13). Similarly, the sheer amount of funding being put into fundamental technical, data, and security-related issues speaks volumes to the nascency of the space (Ossinger; Livni; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel 52-6). Put very briefly, NFTs are part of a given blockchain system; think of them, like cryptocurrency coins, as “units of value” within that system (Roose). NFTs were initially rolled out on Ethereum, though several other blockchains have now implemented their own NFT frameworks. NFTs are usually not the artwork itself, but rather a unique, un-copyable (hence, non-fungible) piece of code that is attached, linked, or connected to another digital file, be that an image, video, text, or something else entirely. NFTs are often referred to as a digital artwork’s “certificate of authenticity” (Roose). At the time of writing, it remains to be seen how widely blockchain and NFT technology will be implemented across the entertainment industries. However, this article aims to outline the current state of implementation in the film trade specifically, and to attempt to sort true potential from the hype. Beginning with an overview of the core issues around blockchain and NFTs as they apply to film properties and adjacent products, current implementations of the technology are outlined, before finishing with a hesitant glimpse into the potential future applications. The Issues and Conversation At the core of current conversations around blockchain are three topics: intellectual property and ownership, concentrations of power and control, and environmental impact. To this I would like to add a consideration of social capital, which I begin with briefly here. Both the film industry and “crypto” — if we take the latter to encompass the various facets of so-called ‘web3’ — are engines of social capital. In the case of cinema, its products are commodified and passed through a model that begins with exclusivity (theatrical release) before progressing to mass availability (home media, streaming). The cinematic object, i.e., an individual copy of a film, is, by virtue of its origins as a mass product of the twentieth century, fungible. The film is captured, copied, stored, distributed, and shared. The film-industrial model has always relied on social phenomena, word of mouth, critical discourse, and latterly on buzz across digital social media platforms. This is perhaps as distinct from fine art, where — at least for dealers — the content of the piece does not necessarily matter so much as verification of ownership and provenance. Similarly, web3, with its decentralised and often-anonymised processes, relies on a kind of social activity, or at least a recorded interaction wherein the chain is stamped and each iteration is updated across the system. Even without the current hype, web3 still relies a great deal on discourse, sharing, and community, particularly as it flattens the existing hierarchies of the Internet that linger from Web 2.0. In terms of NFTs, blockchain systems attach scarcity and uniqueness to digital objects. For now, that scarcity and uniqueness is resulting in financial value, though as Jonathan Beller argues the notion of value could — or perhaps should — be reconsidered as blockchain technology, and especially cryptocurrencies, evolve (Beller 217). Regardless, NFT advocates maintain that this is the future of all online activity. To questions of copyright, the structures of blockchain do permit some level of certainty around where a given piece of intellectual property emerged. This is particularly useful where there are transnational differences in recognition of copyright law, such as in France, for instance (Quiniou 112-13). The Berne Convention stipulates that “the subsistence of copyright does not rest on the compliance with formal requirements: rights will exist if the work meets the requirements for protection set out by national law and treaties” (Guadamuz 1373). However, there are still no legal structures underpinning even the most transparent of transactions, when an originator goes out of their way to transfer rights to the buyer of the accompanying NFT. The minimum requirement — even courtesy — for the assignment of rights is the identification of the work itself; as Guadamuz notes, this is tricky for NFTs as they are written in code (1374). The blockchain’s openness and transparency are its key benefits, but until the code can explicitly include (or concretely and permanently reference) the ‘content’ of an NFT, its utility as a system of ownership is questionable. Decentralisation, too, is raised consistently as a key positive characteristic of blockchain technology. Despite the energy required for this decentralisation (addressed shortly), it is true that, at least in its base code, blockchain is a technology with no centralised source of truth or verification. Instead, such verification is performed by every node on the chain. On the surface, for the film industry, this might mean modes of financing, rights management, and distribution chains that are not beholden to multinational media conglomerates, streamers like Netflix, niche intermediaries, or legacy studios. The result here would be a flattening of the terrain: breaking down studio and corporate gatekeeping in favour of a more democratised creative landscape. Creators and creative teams would work peer-to-peer, paying, contracting, servicing, and distribution via the blockchain, with iron-clad, publicly accessible tracking of transactions and ownership. The alternative, though, is that the same imbalances persist, just in a different form: this is outlined in the next section. As Hunter Vaughan writes, the film industry’s environmental impact has long been under-examined. Its practices are diverse, distributed, and hard to quantify. Cinematic images, Vaughan writes, “do not come from nothing, and they do not vanish into the air: they have always been generated by the earth and sun, by fossil fuels and chemical reactions, and our enjoyment of them has material consequences” (3). We believe that by watching a “green” film like Avatar we are doing good, but it implicates us in the dirty secret, an issue of “ignorance and of voluntary psychosis” where “we do not see who we are harming or how these practices are affecting the environment, and we routinely agree to accept the virtual as real” (5). Beyond questions of implication and eco-material conceptualisation, however, there are stark facts. In the 1920s, the Kodak Park Plant in New York drew 12 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario each day to produce film stock. As the twentieth century came to a close, this amount — for a single film plant — had grown to 35-53 million gallons per day. The waste water was perfunctorily “cleaned” and then dumped into surrounding rivers (72-3). This was just one plant, and one part of the filmmaking process. With the shift to digital, this cost might now be calculated in the extraction of precious metals used to make contemporary cameras, computers, or storage devices. Regardless, extrapolate outwards to a global film industry and one quickly realises the impact is almost beyond comprehension. Considering — let alone calculating — the carbon footprint of blockchain requires outlining some fundamentals of the technology. The two primary architectures of blockchain are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), both of which denote methods of adding and verifying new blocks to a chain. PoW was the first model, employed by Bitcoin and the first iteration of Ethereum. In a PoW model, each new block has a specific cryptographic hash. To confirm the new block, crypto miners use their systems to generate a target hash that is less than or equal to that of the block. The systems process these calculations quickly, as the goal is to be “the first miner with the target hash because that miner is the one who can update the blockchain and receive crypto rewards” (Daly). The race for block confirmation necessitates huge amounts of processing power to make these quick calculations. The PoS model differs in that miners are replaced by validators (or staking services where participants pool validation power). Rather than investing in computer power, validators invest in the blockchain’s coins, staking those coins (tokens) in a smart contract (think of this contract like a bank account or vault). When a new block is proposed, an algorithm chooses a validator based on the size of their stake; if the block is verified, the validator receives further cryptocurrency as a reward (Castor). Given the ubiquity and exponential growth of blockchain technology and its users, an accurate quantification of its carbon footprint is difficult. For some precedent, though, one might consider the impact of the Bitcoin blockchain, which runs on a PoW model. As the New York Times so succinctly puts it: “the process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million” (Huang, O’Neill and Tabuchi). The current Ethereum system (at time of writing), where the majority of NFT transactions take place, also runs on PoW, and it is estimated that a single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to nearly nine days of power consumption by an average US household (Digiconomist). Ethereum always intended to operate on a PoS system, and the transition to this new model is currently underway (Castor). Proof of Stake transactions use significantly less energy — the new Ethereum will supposedly be approximately 2,000 times more energy efficient (Beekhuizen). However, newer systems such as Solana have been explicit about their efficiency goals, stating that a single Solana transaction uses less energy (1,837 Joules, to be precise) than keeping an LED light on for one hour (36,000 J); one Ethereum transaction, for comparison, uses over 692 million J (Solana). In addition to energy usage, however, there is also the question of e-waste as a result of mining and general blockchain operations which, at the time of writing, for Bitcoin sits at around 32 kilotons per year, around the same as the consumer IT wastage of the Netherlands (de Vries and Stoll). How the growth in NFT awareness and adoption amplifies this impact remains to be seen, but depending on which blockchain they use, they may be wasting energy and resources by design. If using a PoW model, the more valuable the cryptocurrency used to make the purchase, the more energy (“gas”) required to authenticate the purchase across the chain. Images abound online of jerry-rigged crypto data centres of varying quality (see also efficiency and safety). With each NFT minted, sold, or traded, these centres draw — and thus waste, for gas — more and more energy. With increased public attention and scrutiny, cryptocurrencies are slowly realising that things could be better. As sustainable alternatives become more desirable and mainstream, it is safe to predict that many NFT marketplaces may migrate to Cardano, Solana, or other more efficient blockchain bases. For now, though, this article considers the existing implementations of NFTs and blockchain technology within the film industry. Current Implementations The current applications of NFTs in film centre around financing and distribution. In terms of the former, NFTs are saleable items that can raise capital for production, distribution, or marketing. As previously mentioned, director Kevin Smith launched Jay & Silent Bob’s Crypto Studio in order to finish and release Killroy Was Here. Smith released over 600 limited edition tokens, including one of the film itself (Moore). In October 2021, renowned Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai sold an NFT with unreleased footage from his film In the Mood for Love at Sotheby’s for US$550,000 (Raybaud). Quentin Tarantino entered the arena in January 2022, auctioning uncut scenes from his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, despite the threat of legal action from the film’s original distributor Miramax (Dailey). In Australia, an early adopter of the technology is director Michael Beets, who works in virtual production and immersive experiences. His immersive 14-minute VR film Nezunoban (2020) was split into seven different chapters, and each chapter was sold as an NFT. Beets also works with artists to develop entry tickets that are their own piece of generative art; with these tickets and the chapters selling for hundreds of dollars at a time, Beets seems to have achieved the impossible: turning a profit on a short film (Fletcher). Another Australian writer-producer, Samuel Wilson, now based in Canada, suggests that the technology does encourage filmmakers to think differently about what they create: At the moment, I’m making NFTs from extra footage of my feature film Miles Away, which will be released early next year. In one way, it’s like a new age of behind-the-scenes/bonus features. I have 14 hours of DV tapes that I’m cutting into a short film which I will then sell in chapters over the coming months. One chapter will feature the dashing KJ Apa (Songbird, Riverdale) without his shirt on. So, hopefully that can turn some heads. (Wilson, in Fletcher) In addition to individual directors, a number of startup companies are also seeking to get in on the action. One of these is Vuele, which is best understood as a blockchain-based streaming service: an NFT Netflix, if you like. In addition to films themselves, the service will offer extra content as NFTs, including “behind the scenes content, bonus features, exclusive Q&As, and memorabilia” (CurrencyWorks). Vuele’s launch title is Zero Contact, directed by Rick Dugdale and starring Anthony Hopkins. The film is marketed as “the World’s First NFT Feature Film” (as at the time of writing, though, both Vuele and its flagship film have yet to launch). Also launching is NFT Studios, a blockchain-based production company that distributes the executive producer role to those buying into the project. NFT Studios is a decentralised administrative organisation (DAO), guided by tech experts, producers, and film industry intermediaries. NFT Studios is launching with A Wing and a Prayer, a biopic of aeronaut Brian Milton (NFT Studios), and will announce their full slate across festivals in 2022. In Australia, Culture Vault states that its aim is to demystify crypto and champion Australian artists’ rights and access to the space. Co-founder and CEO Michelle Grey is well aware of the aforementioned current social capital of NFTs, but is also acutely aware of the space’s opacity and the ubiquity of often machine-generated tat. “The early NFT space was in its infancy, there was a lot of crap around, but don’t forget there’s a lot of garbage in the traditional art world too,” she says (cited in Miller). Grey and her company effectively act like art dealers; intermediaries between the tech and art worlds. These new companies claim to be adhering to the principles of web3, often selling themselves as collectives, DAOs, or distributed administrative systems. But the entrenched tendencies of the film industry — particularly the persistent Hollywood system — are not so easily broken down. Vuele is a joint venture between CurrencyWorks and Enderby Entertainment. The former is a financial technology company setting up blockchain systems for businesses, including the establishment of branded digital currencies such as the controversial FreedomCoin (Memoria); the latter, Enderby, is a production company founded by Canadian film producer (and former investor relations expert in the oil and uranium sectors) Rick Dugdale (Wiesner). Similarly, NFT Studios is partnered with consulting and marketing agencies and blockchain venture capitalists (NFT Investments PLC). Depending on how charitable or cynical one is feeling, these start-ups are either helpful intermediaries to facilitate legacy media moving into NFT technology, or the first bricks in the capitalist wall to bar access for entry to other players. The Future Is… Buffering Marketplaces like Mintable, OpenSea, and Rarible do indeed make the minting and selling of NFTs fairly straightforward — if you’ve ever listed an item for sale on eBay or Facebook, you can probably mint an NFT. Despite this, the current major barrier for average punters to the NFT space remains technical knowledge. The principles of blockchain remain fairly opaque — even this author, who has been on a deep dive for this article, remains sceptical that widespread adoption across multiple applications and industries is feasible. Even so, as Rennie notes, “the unknown is not what blockchain technology is, or even what it is for (there are countless ‘use cases’), but how it structures the actions of those who use it” (235). At the time of writing, a great many commentators and a small handful of scholars are speculating about the role of the metaverse in the creative space. If the endgame of the metaverse is realised, i.e., a virtual, interactive space where users can interact, trade, and consume entertainment, the role of creators, dealers, distributors, and other brokers and players will be up-ended, and have to re-settle once again. Film industry practitioners might look to the games space to see what the road might look like, but then again, in an industry that is — at its best — somewhat resistant to change, this may simply be a fad that blows over. Blockchain’s current employment as a get-rich-quick mechanism for the algorithmic literati and as a computational extension of existing power structures suggests nothing more than another techno-bubble primed to burst (Patrickson 591-2; Klein). Despite the aspirational commentary surrounding distributed administrative systems and organisations, the current implementations are restricted, for now, to startups like NFT Studios. In terms of cinema, it does remain to be seen whether the deployment of NFTs will move beyond a kind of “Netflix with tchotchkes” model, or a variant of crowdfunding with perks. Once Vuele and NFT Studios launch properly, we may have a sense of how this all will play out, particularly alongside less corporate-driven, more artistically-minded initiatives like that of Michael Beets and Culture Vault. It is possible, too, that blockchain technology may streamline the mechanics of the industry in terms of automating or simplifying parts of the production process, particularly around contracts, financing, licensing. This would obviously remove some of the associated labour and fees, but would also de-couple long-established parts and personnel of the industry — would Hollywood and similar industrial-entertainment complexes let this happen? 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