One of the highest contrasting examples of policy surrounding the shale gas industries in the respective cases of China and the US are in the practice of acquiring exploration rights. In the US, there are often small to mid-sized companies that saw the entry of the shale gas market options plentiful due to the low barrier to acquiring the mineral rights on lands. In China, these barriers to mineral rights were comparatively quite higher, requiring petitioning and winning contracts from the central government. Intentionally, there is no mention of a “correct” policy for acquiring mineral rights on lands, but instead serves to contrast the market forces in play in similar industries in two different jurisdictions. On top of this, the WTO is a player in ensuring that are is some competitiveness in domestic markets, as the domestic energy markets have a global effect. This is where the WTO is able to possess some influence. With ascension of China to the WTO, they were and are required to expand the competition between state owned agencies and privately held ventures. This is ultimately playing out in the greater market-driven pricing schemes that have begun to emerge in the nation. A totally provincial-level model of mineral right acquisition may not be the most effective policy for China, as it would undo a lot of the progress in competition that has begun to expand throughout the decades since their introduction into the WTO. Ultimately the takeaway from this chapter is that pricing schemes and the ease of mineral rights acquisition have a correlated relationship because energy extraction is a highly capital-dependent industry.
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