Fighting Over Oil: Introducing a New Dataset

Recent research on armed civil conflict has suggested that oil-producing countries tend to experience conflict more often than their non-oil-producing counterparts. However, this research relies on weak and incomplete measures of petroleum resources. To facilitate more rigorous research on the possible links between hydrocarbons and conflict, this paper presents and describes a new global dataset, PETRODATA. The dataset includes 890 onshore and 383 offshore locations with geographic coordinates and information on the first oil or gas discovery and production year. PETRODATA allows researchers to control for both the spatial and temporal overlap of regions with hydrocarbon reserves and armed conflict. To illustrate the use of data, we conduct a duration analysis on the types of armed civil conflict. The results suggest that oil and gas located in conflict area lengthen governmental conflicts but have no effect on conflicts over territory.