Every 5 years, the fed. gov¿t. decides the areas in the offshore waters of the U.S. it will offer for leasing and establishes a schedule for individual lease sales, conducted by the Minerals Mgmt. Service. It¿s failure to include price thresholds on leases issued in 1998 and 1999 would likely cost the fed. gov¿t. billions of dollars in forgone royalties. This report: illustrates the potential loss of royalties because of the absence of price thresholds in leases issued in 1998 and 1999; and provides an update of the possible consequences of Kerr-McGee¿s legal challenge on royalties already collected and evaluates the potential for additional forgone royalties if price thresholds no longer apply to future production from the 1996, 1997, and 2000 DWRRA leases.

Mexico has large extractive industries and it traditionally has raised sizable fiscal revenues from the oil and gas sector. A confluence of factors—elevated commodity prices, financial challenges of the state-owned oil company Pemex, and revenue needs for financing social and public investment spending over the medium term—suggest that a review of Mexico’s taxation regimes for natural resources would be opportune, against the backdrop of a comprehensive approach to tackling Mexico’s challenges. This paper identifies opportunities for redesigning mining taxation to increase somewhat the revenue intake while maintaining the favorable investment profile of the sector. It also discusses recent reforms to the oil and gas fiscal regime and future reform considerations, with attention to the attractiveness of investment on commercial terms—an issue that should be placed in the context of an overall reform of Pemex’s business strategy and possibly of the energy sector more generally.