Critique of the Policies and Laws to Promote Local Content in International Contracts and Present the Selected Solutions, with Emphasis on the Oil and Gas Sector

Like most countries with oil and gas reserves, Iran has sought to maximize its domestic share in international oil contracts by adopting different policies and laws. Nevertheless, these policies have always faced challenges in formulating and implementing them, resulting in the failure to fully realize the goal of enhancing domestic share in international treaties. This article reviews the barriers and challenges of formulating and implementing policies, laws, and regulations to improve internal sharing, and attempts to provide solutions to the identified barriers. The paradigm of this research is interpretive, and it can be considered as an applied research from the objective point of view. The approach of this study is inductive and qualitative, and its database strategy is considered. Data collection is done through library studies, upstream legal analysis and documentation, analysis of semi-open interviews with oil exploration and production companies (E&P), oil contractors and service companies (OSC, EPC), and oil industry equipment makers relying on thematic analysis model. Identification of related challenges and strategies is discussed. The results of this research divide the set of challenges into three categories: macro and executive policy challenges, corporate challenges, and contract and tender challenges.