The Economics of Natural Resources Ventures

Resource-extraction seems to require ever-increasing scales of activities in the natural resource and energy sector. Rising resource prices necessitate new technological approaches to mining, drilling, transportation, upgrading and final stages of production. In quite a few cases, the new technological approaches occur in the form of discrete, large-scale projects. Large-scale resource ventures are characterised by large sums of investment and high risks and therefore give rise to specific questions that are not discussed sufficiently in resource economics and investment theory.