Local Content Strategy, solution for successful global oil and gas projects in emerging economies

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis is to help international oil and gas companies to develop a better local content strategy in global oil and gas projects in emerging economies.By checking the previous work in this field, some issues are still vague, it seems that there is not a unite definition for local content in literature. Not so many documents have been found about the effect of local content expectations on global projects and more importantly, few guidelines about how to progress a local content strategy in global projects in emerging economies exist in scientific resources. This issue is important because nowadays companies have projects abroad and more confronted with local content regulations and need to know how to answer them while it also has challenges by itself.To find the research goal the writer built interviews and surveys and asked expatriate project managers and country managers to share their experience. The result is that if companies need to ensure the local content in global oil and gas projects in emerging economies first they need to know that the main stakeholders are national and local governments and the national oil companies. There are many challenges because of the emerging economies characteristics and the global project environment which are the lack of competent people and unrealistic local content expectations. Based on this thesis work a local content strategy should have components like Joint venture with local firms, training and skill development of local workforce, developing local education and training institutions, industry collaboration, and local procurements and should plan and execute these strategies as soon as the project starts.