جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه "قراردادهای بالادستی نفت و گاز" در نشریات گروه "فقه و حقوق"

In economic relations and financial law, trade secrets form an important part of the assets of the economic actors. Disclosure of the scientific information causes serious damages to the owners of such information. As maintaining the confidentiality of the reservoirs information and technical issues is one of the terms and conditions contemplated under upstream oil and gas contracts, some questions arise here as follows. How, for what duration and to what extent should the scope of the confidentiality of the contracts, keeping the confidentiality, conditions and obligations of the parties for confidentiality in this contracts be? Is confidentiality recognized as a legal principle or is simply considered as one of the terms and conditions envisaged under the trade contracts? To answer such questions, the present descriptive-analytical research examined the domestic laws and regulations, international documents and regulations as well as the upstream oil and gas contracts. Seemingly, the scope of confidentiality under Iranian regulations both covers the provisions under a contract, including the reservoirs information and the well drilling, within the framework of a contract.

Oil and gas industry plays a key role in Iranian economy because of significant oil and gas resources in Iran. Despite over a century of experience of Petroleum contracts, our country has not yet been able to resolve its weaknesses, due to various issues such as political, economic, social, administrative, legal, historical, and cultural considerations. Iran, like other developing countries, suffering from lack of sufficient capital and technical knowledge as well as a desirable management capability for implementing upstream large oil projects such as exploration, drilling, development and production. So the presence of international experienced companies in this industry seem to be inevitable and it seems that this requires concluding cooperation agreements with these International Oil Companies (IOCs). Accordingly, after outlining the basic research concepts, the legal requirements and constraints governing upstream oil and gas contracts, in order to assess the challenges have been studied. Subsequently, 26 of the most important challenges out of the 40 identified challenges from the literature were selected using the Fuzzy Delphi method. Finally, there are suggestions and solutions to reduce these challenges including the developing a comprehensive plan for development of the oil and gas fields, using international companies in the form of consulting and services contracts, aligning the interests of the employer and the contractor in the implementation of projects, paying close attention to the development of technology in the industry, strengthening regional organizations and treaties to strengthen energy diplomacy, maximizing production from sharing fields in the least time to reduce these challenges etc.

Under Iranian legal regime, investment of private sector including Iranian and foreign companies, in upstream oil and gas activities is only allowed through conclusion of contracts with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). As petroleum contracts could be divided into concessions, production sharing or service contracts and each also has its varieties, this question arisen whether Iranian law has allowed a specific form of contract or not. In this paper, with regard to governing laws and regulations we conclude that the legislator has not recommended any specific upstream contract and it vested selection of the appropriate forms of contract in Ministry of Petroleum which shall conclude upstream contracts based on legal conditions.

Difficulty of extraction from the depths of the earth and sea beds has made oil and gas industry the most dangerous industry in the world, so that the parties of upstream oil and gas contracts always seek to use different solutions such as indemnity clause to allocate the risks. According to indemnity clause, risks is up to the party that is more capable of managing risks. continuously repetition of this clause in the aforementioned contracts can be regarded as a practice- a step before formation of a custom rule- in the field of risk allocation in oil and gas industry that undoubtedly will be an effective step in formation of lex petrolea in the future. But by a survey in writings and thoughts of scholars and the text of the upstream oil and gas contracts, it can be found that there is no overall consensus about the definition and scope of this clause and sometimes the scope of this clause has been confused with other similar terms. So in present article we have considered concept, nature and important notes in drafting of this provision.

Assuming that the rules formulated for short-term contracts will not be suitable for the needs of relationships that should continue over a period of time, it has been accepted both in domestic law and international law that an international investment contract, particularly upstream petroleum contracts, may be influenced by change in circumstances. People are supposed to bear the losses arising from unexpected situations in short-term, but that is not always the case in long-term relationships. Significant changes could occur in the economic and social conditions surrounding foreign investment contracts. Petroleum contracts, in particular, are negotiated under complex and uncertain circumstances. Therefore, the parties’ foreseeability to predict all the contingencies is limited and every possible eventuality in contract cannot be specified in advance. Under these circumstances, one option is for the parties to accept reasonable requests for renegotiation by their partner when the contractual or financial equilibrium has been severely disrupted by external events.