ANALYSIS OF INTERNATIONAL OIL PRODUCTION COMPETITON USING GAME THEORY

Abstract

The assumption that the players in the international crude oil market are OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) member countries and non-OPEC oil producing countries is common. That the players enter into a competitive tendency by using various strategy sets such as production level and price to maximize profit and / or controlling the oil markets reveals that the market in question can be analyzed with game theory models. The aim of this study is to analyze the competitive oil production amounts of OPEC and non-OPEC countries on the basis of game theory. For this purpose, the production amounts and crude oil price series of these players covering the period 1972-2019 were used. The coefficients of production functions that show the existence of competition in oil markets are estimated by the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) method. Cournot-Nash and Stackelberg equilibrium solutions are calculated based on the obtained models. According to the Cournot-Nash equilibrium, at the Stackelberg equilibrium, it was observed that the production level of the leader player increased and the production level of the follower player decreased. The findings are in line with studies in which Cournot-Nash equilibrium outputs are higher than Stackelberg equilibrium outputs. It is suggested that the players stay in the Cournot-Nash equilibrium in order to reach the optimal level of production through production quantity and price strategies.