Investigate the Challenges of Technological Local Content Development in Oil and Gas Industry and Provide Policy Recommendations

Iran’s oil and natural gas sector has a huge potential in natural, human and physical resources and is also considered the driver of the national economy. Such a dependency and lack of proper exploitation of domestic capabilities, especially in upstream industries, are problematic issues in the economic growth and development of Iran. This study aims to identify the obstacles to domestic oil and gas technological development and provides policy advice to decision-makers. This paper is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive and survey in terms of the data collection method. In this research, we used the case study method, and analyze the challenges of domestic manufacturing development in the oil and gas industry, then the policy recommendations are presented. The identified challenges are divided into five categories: legislative and regulatory challenges, financing challenges, private sector empowerment challenges, human capital challenges, and industrial development policy challenges. results show that improving the knowledge of contract law and appropriate energy diplomacy in international contracts, improving the technology absorption capacity and technological cooperation of domestic companies, and evaluating senior managers based on domestic manufacturing development indicators are the most important policy recommendations.