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Financial derivatives do not represent ownership rights in any asset but, rather, derive their value from the value of some other underlying commodity or other asset. They are claimed to be efficient and effective tools for hedging against risk exposure. In many countries, use of derivatives in electricity industry has come about with electricity price deregulation. In electricity market, risk of price fluctuations threatens electricity consumers and producers. While, varying prices encouraged consumers to find ways to reduce their costs, and producers looked for ways to stabilize cash flow, derivative contracts were introduced to transfer price risk, to those who are able to bear it. Price risk management in electricity industry is relatively a new phenomen. However, electricity derivative contracts have grown rapidly. In this article, we will introduce various kinds of financial derivatives (such as Forwards, Futures, Options, and Multiple-Trigger Derivatives), commodity characteristics of electricity and price risk management methods with derivatives in the electricity industry.

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In 2010, the global transport sector consumed about 2,200 million tons of oil equivalent. About 96% of this amount came from oil. It shows that more than 60% of the oil consumed globally goes to the transportation sector. Road transport accounts for the bulk of the transportation energy consumption. The light-duty vehicles (LDVs), including light trucks, light commercial vehicles, and minibuses accounted for about 52%. World Energy Council (WEC) has re-examined the future of the transport sector by building Global Transport Scenarios to 2050 “Freeway” and “Tollway.” The “Freeway” scenario envisages a world where pure market forces prevail to create a climate for open global competition. The “Tollway” scenario describes a more regulated world where governments decide to intervene in markets to promote technology solutions and infrastructure development that put common interests at the forefront. In 2050, total fuel demand in all transport modes will increase by 30% (Tollway) to 82% (Freeway) above the 2010 levels. Transport sector fuel mix will still depend heavily on gasoline, diesel, fuel oil and jet fuel.

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Differen world energy outlook with different horizons (2035, 2040 and 2050) show that demand for primary energy will increase. The energymix in 2050 will mainly be fossil based although the share of theses fuels will decrease. Accorging to some forecasts, energy consumption will increase more than 50 percent during next 30 years which most of this growth belongs to non-OECD countries. In supply side, the fastest growth will belong to natural gas and renewables. According to World Energy Council (WEC), Environmental sustainability، energy security, and energy equity are three pillars of the energy trilemma. The WEC has built two scenarios for fulfillment of these goals for world energy outlook to 2050. The more consumer-driven Jazz scenario has a focus on energy equity with priority given to achieving individual access and affordability of energy through economic growth. But more voter-driven Symphony scenario has a focus on achieving environmental sustainability through internationally coordinated policies and practices. In Jazz scenario, the growth of energy consumption is more than Symphony scenario. In addition, the growth of renewables in Symphony scenario is twice of Jazz scenario.

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The security, political and economic impacts of shale oil and gas, has changed the supply side of international energy market. Different countries are looking for feasible technology of shale oil production. In this paper after studies on the technical and economic aspects of shale oil production, we studied on the CAPEX and OPEX of shale oil production in a feasibility study framework in order to analysis the investments behaviour. We found that subject to no vast change in the current technology, the price of 52$ per barrel is a balanced long rune price for investors to have 10% IRR. Subject to forecasts on the main parameters of the costs of shale oil production and macro energy independence policy in the USA, we found that before 2014 because of low development of hydraulic fracturing, the production costs of shale oil was high, so continuous shale oil production needed the high oil price. After that time when production costs of shale oil in USA decreased, in order to prevent the development of this technology in the other countries, especially Russia and China, the price of oil declined and managed around 52$.

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As the electricity industry has changed and became more competitive, the electricity price forecasting has become more important. Investors need to estimate future prices in order to take proper strategy to maintain their market share and to maximize their profits. In the economic paradigm, this goal is pursued using econometric models. The validity of these models is judged by their forecasting errors. This paper is an effort to compare the forecasting power of Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and ARIMA models for hourly electricity prices in Iran electricity market. According to the results, ANNs has the best forecasting performance followed by GA in the second place and ARIMA model in the third place.

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Recent decades, Peer- to-peer transaction platforms have become increasingly important in different economic use cases. These technologies are attractive for utilities, developers, financial institutions, Governments and academic communities. Some utilities in energy sector run applications for blockchain in energy sector projects. This paper discussed fundamental concepts of blockchain technology at first. Then opportunities and challenges face energy sector by using blockchain in some use cases. Blockchain technologies could be applied to a variety of use cases related to the operations and business processes of energy companies. Existing literature dictates potential applications and aspect of business models that might be affected, as summarized: billing, sales and marketing, trading and markets, automation, smart and grid application and data transfer, greed management, security and identity management, sharing of resources, competition and transparency. Notable use cases are wholesale energy trading and supply, imbalance settlement, digitalization and IoT platforms and peer to peer trading and decentralized energy.

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In recent few years, some endogenous and exogenous barriers caused different challenges in oil and gas project financing. Since appearance and development of innovative ideas such as DLT and blockchain in financial business models, this methods are replacing with traditional models. A blockchain is a decentralized, distributed and oftentimes public, digital ledger consisting of records called blocks that is used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved block cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks. By storing data across its peer to peer network, the blockchain eliminates a number of risks that come with data being held centrally.  This idea has resolved the problems face economic firms in financing methods. Some international companies had issued oil – backed cryptocurrency for financing oil and gas upstream projects. This paper focused on financing Iranian oil and gas upstream projects by using oil – backed cryptocurrency in the form of conventional contract models. As the result, using this method will improve conventional oil and gas contracts fiscal regimes’ efficiency.

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The Energy Charter has been considered as the first and most important international treaty to regulate international energy laws and regulations. Considering that Iran is one of the most important and influential countries in the world in the field of energy production and transit, the necessity of examining the different aspects of this document is not hidden to anyone. The treaty covers four main issues: the promotion of investment in energy by foreign sources based on the privileges granted to domestic investors or the privileges mentioned in the most favored nation, energy free trade in accordance with WTO rules, freedom of energy transit through pipelines and power transmission networks, and establish a special mechanism for resolving disputes between countries or countries and investors. Regarding the issues raised in the Energy Charter, the issue of energy transit is one of the most important chapters of this Charter. This article, while explaining the legal nature of electricity as one of the pillars of energy, explains the legal, political, technical and economic requirements of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the foreign trade sector of electricity in order to annex to the Charter. Considering that Iran's neighboring countries have a great need to supply their electricity, we will finally see that paying close attention to the precise policy in the field of electricity transit is essential for Iran.

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The risk of price fluctuations in petroleum products has always caused many problems for this industry activists. Iran is the sixth largest producer and the biggest exporter of bitumen in the world, which many companies operating in its bitumen industry. The purpose of this study is the feasibility study of creating a bitumen futures contracts market as a tool to cover the risk of the actors of this industry. For this, the Pennings and Meulenberg three-part method is used, which states that to feasibility study of creating a futures market for each commodity, it is necessary to perform the feasibility study in three steps: examining the characteristics of the product, examining the characteristics of the market and the contract, and examining the possibility of cross-hedge for the price risk of the product. The results of examines indicate that it is possible to create a market for bitumen futures contracts in Iran, because first, the volume of transactions and price fluctuations of bitumen is very high and its supply and demand are continuous, and it is possible to store and separate different types of bitumen. Second, it is possible to control some conditions such as contract size and non-manipulation in this market. Third, there is no parallel market for cross-hedge of bitumen price risks.