Structured Financing Techniques in Oil and Gas （结构化融资技术在石油和天然气）.pdfVIP

Chapter 21 Structured Financing Techniques in Oil and Gas Project Fina.nce Future-Flow Securitizations, Prepaids, Volumetric Production Payments, and Project Finance Collateralized Debt Obligations Christopher L. Culp and J. Paul Forrester* I. INTRODUCTION Project finance is the extension of credit to finance an economic unit where the future cash flows of that unit serve as collateral for the loan. By facilitating the separation of project assets from the sponsor and enabling the financing of those assets on the basis of the cash flows they are expected to generate, project finance can allow a sponsor to undertake a project with more risk than the sponsor is otherwise willing to underwrite independently. Project finance can also help sponsors avoid incurring leverage beyond tolerable levels, thereby helping them preserve their debt capacity, credit ratings, and cash flows for alternative capital investment activities. Large-scale oil and gas projects have been popular subjects for project financing since the inception of the market. Indeed, modem project finance is thought to have begun in the 1930s when a Dallas bank extended a nonrecourse loan to finance an oil and gas project. I Project finance came of age in the 1970s and 1980s with the Please address correspondence to christopher.culp@ or jforrester@ . The usual disclaimer applies, and the opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of any organization with which the authors are affiliated or their clients. Economic equivalents of project finance actually date back to the Assyrian and Mesopotamian eras. See, e.g., Edward J. Swan, BUILDING THE GLOBAL MARKET: A 4000 YEAR HISTORY OF