Information asymmetries and externalities, company strategies and informational efficiency in oil exploration.

Summary We start from the fact that, for reasons of both pure economics and energy economics, it is important to seek efficiency in oil exploration. A pragmatic way of looking at efficiency is through informational efficiency, which requires that the different blocks be drilled in descending order of estimated profitability, with estimates being made on the basis of the best (in the sense of reliability) information available. It remains to be agreed on what the notion of "best available information" encompasses. This will be either the information held by the most experienced oil companies (which is due to the existence of information asymmetries in favour of these more experienced companies), or the information revealed by drilling and which makes it possible to evaluate the chances of success on neighbouring blocks with similar geological conditions (which is due to the existence of informational externalities of exploration). Taking into account these asymmetries and information externalities, we will say that exploration is informationally efficient when - on the one hand, the initial exploration choices are guided by the most experienced companies, - and on the other hand, during the drilling phase, faced with the informational externality, the companies adopt a sequential exploration, i.e. excluding both overinvestment and strategic underinvestment The problem that we address in this thesis is then to know if oil companies, placed in normal conditions of competition, are likely to emerge a state of informationally efficient exploration, the analysis being conducted theoretically and empirically.