Production-Sharing Agreements (PSAs) are among the most common types of contractual arrangements for petroleum exploration and development.
Production sharing agreements can be beneficial to governments of countries that lack the expertise and/or capital to develop their resources and wish to attract foreign companies to do so. They can be very profitable agreements for the oil companies involved, but often involve considerable risk.
In a production sharing contract (“PSC”), the host country's government awards to an oil company (or group of companies, typically called the Contractor) the rights to explore in a specified area and, following discovery of hydrocarbons in the area, the right to produce the discovered resources.
Production sharing agreement (PSA) is a contract between one or more investors and the government in which rights to prospection, exploration and extraction of mineral resources from a specific area over a specified period of time are determined.
Production agreement is a legally binding contract setting out the terms and conditions for the production of goods or services between two parties at a place.
A production sharing contract (PSC) is a contractual relationship between a host government and a private sector participant ('investor') whereby the government contracts with the investor to carry out oil and gas exploration and production activities (E&P activities) in a defined area for a defined period of time.
A sharing agreement is a legal agreement between two or more parties to govern the rights and responsibilities while sharing the use of or access to an asset. Sharing agreements can apply to property, information, data, services, among other things.
The contractual form changes between and within countries but the most common contracts are concession contracts and production sharing agreement (PSA). The concession contract is simplified to a royalty rate while the PSA is based to the share of the extraction allocated to the costs reimbursement.
Concession contracts - partnerships between the public sector and a private company. Concession contracts are used by public authorities to deliver services or construct infrastructure. Concessions involve a contractual arrangement between a public authority and an economic operator (the concession holder).