The Shadow of Uncertainty: Climate Policy and the Value of Petroleum Resources

We study how uncertainty about future climate policy affects the valuation of oil resources. Using a structural model of extraction and exploration applied to field-level data from the Norwegian Continental Shelf, we estimate the impact of climate policy uncertainty (CPU) on the shadow prices of both discovered and undiscovered oil. We find that higher CPU lowers these marginal values, especially after the 2015 Paris Agreement, reducing incentives to extract and explore. This decline translates into an implicit carbon cost of $15–$38 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. Unlike a Pigouvian tax, this shadow cost does not scale with emissions intensity or generate fiscal revenue. As a result, it reduces production and emissions in a diffuse and economically inefficient manner, without rewarding low emitters or financing green transition policies.