Global trends in state resource management

Taking a global perspective, this chapter examines the origins of legal systems to facilitate hydrocarbon exploitation and the growth of the petroleum industry. Identifying four main approaches to state resource management, the emergence of these regimes is situated within wider socio-economic contexts which illustrates connections between a state's approach and shifts in political economy nationally and and internationally. In doing so, the influence of processes such as imperialism, Keynesianism and neoliberalism on state resource management becomes apparent. The chapter considers power struggles between states and oil companies and discusses the formation of the Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries and member states' efforts to assert ‘permanent sovereignty’ over hydrocarbon resources. Deliberating the wave of nationalisations and increases in national oil companies which occurred during the 1970s, the ideas underpinning these developments are scrutinised alongside the ‘neoliberal counter-wave’ (Ryggvik, 2010) which occurred in the 1980s. Signifying a rollback in state participation in hydrocarbon exploitation globally amidst associated ideologies, changes in the latter decade have been overturned in recent years through a growth in national oil companies and moves by states towards asserting stronger control over hydrocarbons, thus illustrating some of the dynamics and conflicts of state resource management.