NEGOTIATION ON NATURAL RESOURCES

Abstract

The host government (HG) of resource-rich countries (RRC) dealing with multiple International Oil Companies (IOCs) faces a choice between making a simultaneous multilateral offer and a sequential bilateral offer on equity shares from resource value. Provided that the HG treats all its foreign partners in a simultaneous negotiation as a single entity, it is argued that the HG is predicted to gain a higher equity share from a simultaneous multilateral bargaining deal than from a sequential bilateral one with each player. Furthermore, we argue that in case of positive weak externality from a sequential bilateral game, HG would still prefer a simultaneous multilateral game due to superadditivity and efficiency properties of grand coalition.