Our annual guide provides information about oil and gas tax regimes and a directory of our global oil and gas tax contacts.

How can this guide help you?

Our guide can help you implement local tax legislation, which varies so much from general corporate tax regimes.

Many countries mandate their own legislation, covering both the production and consumption of energy. At the same time, oil and gas companies comprise a significant source of state's revenues around the world, and forward thinking governments are constantly working on making oil and gas tax regimes attractive to investors.

Here are some of the broader changes which influenced the tax regulations in this year's guide.

• Updating tax regimes: During 2011, many countries significantly changed their tax regimes, which affected tax burdens for companies. Changes influenced industry taxes, such as royalties and petroleum taxes, and general taxes, such as income tax rates and other general fiscal terms.
• Discovering new hydrocarbon reserves: New frontier countries in which hydrocarbon reserves have just been discovered such as some African nations, Cyprus and Israel (included in our 2012 guide) are working towards designing their national legal and tax legislation for the oil and gas industry.
• Developing unconventional oil and gas: Governments are focused on forcing development of unconventional oil and gas reserves.
• Increasing shale gas development: Shale gas development increases in North America and high scale development may be started in Europe. Poland is working on its tax regime for shale gas.
• Competing for Arctic reserves: Arctic countries are competing to attract investments into offshore and onshore projects and may revise their tax legislation. Russia, which has the largest potential Arctic oil and gas reserves, is already in the process of elaborating a new attractive tax regime for Arctic offshore projects.
• Managing high oil and gas costs: Governments are striving to manage high oil and gas prices by maximizing efficient production of oil and gas. This strategy aims to reduce oil and gas costs in state budgets while securing a fair return for the extraction of a nation's natural resources.

What's new this year?

• The new countries covered in the 2012 guide are Benin, Chile, Cyprus, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iceland, Israel, Mauritania, Poland and Ukraine.
• The content is based on information as of to 1 January 2012, although in some cases more recent information is included if available.

To gain valuable insights, download your copy of the 2012 global oil and gas tax guide.

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