Eduardo G Pereira and Tonje P Gormley (eds), Local Content for the International Petroleum Industry

The imperatives for petroleum exploration and development transcend oil revenue benefit to cover other local benefits that a country can derive from such activities. Thus, local content development and regulation is a topical issue in the international petroleum industry. The book, Local Content for the International Petroleum Industry by Eduardo G Pereira and Tonje P Gormley (eds), garners contributors from all over the world for the purpose of analysing the global practice for ‘local content development, regulation and implementation’ in the international petroleum industry. The book provides a macro analysis of how various countries have evolved and approached the regulation of local content in the petroleum industry and the experiences with the implementation of such regulation. The book has an introduction, 19 chapters and a reasoned conclusion. The introduction sets the scene for the reader by providing an excellent overview of what is meant by local content, the factors that inform a state’s choice in regulating local content and the summary of the book content. Each of the 19 chapter contains an analysis of local content development and regulation in; Algeria (by Waniss A Otman), Angola (by Patricia Rosario), Azerbaijan (by Ummi Jalilova), Brazil (by Daniel Szyfman and Daniel L Simoes), Canada (by Nigel Bankes), China (by Leslie Zhang Weihua), Cyprus (by Deborah Primett and others), Egypt (by Loic Conan and Sayed El Araby), Republic of Equatorial Guinea (by Cristina Sanchez Cosme), Ghana (by Thomas Kojo Stephes and Theophilus Acheampong), Iran (by Kamran Fatahi), Kenya (by Beryl Claire Asiago), Lebanon (by Ziad Obeid and Emilie Tankel), Libya (by Waniss A Otman), Mozambique (by Paula Daurte Rocha and Tiago Arouca Mendes), Nigeria (Bunmi Obembe), Norway, Qatar (by Ruchdi Maalouf) and Timor-Leste (by Manuel Santos Vitor and others), respectively. The chapters mostly follow the trend of providing an overview of the historical antecedents of the petroleum industry in the country case study, an analysis of the broader context of local content regulation, an analysis of the local content regime and implementation and identification of challenges for implementation and concluding remarks. The editors provide a reasoned conclusion that contains an analysis of the vital lessons, which can be extrapolated from the experiences of the relevant petroleum host countries in developing and regulating local content.