Contractual Solutions to Barriers of Technology Transfer in the Upstream Contracts

For Oil and gas producing countries it is important to transfer the advanced technologies used in upstream segments from E&Ps to NOCs and local companies. However, in upstream contracts, a large number of technology transfer agreements have failed to reach their initial intended goals. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to examine barriers to technology transfer in upstream contracts and provide better contractual solutions. Library documents, previous studies, and semi-structured interviews have been used as research tools for this investigation. The statistical population of the research includes oil companies' experts, high rank managers, engineers and project managers. Data analyses conducted using three stages of open-centered and selective coding, as well as the review of previous studies. The result shows that the four categories "lack of international communication", "lack of proper financing of projects", "lack of technology management knowledge", "inappropriate methods of technology transfer" are causal conditions stand as barriers to technology transfers. The results also showed that in order to tackle current obstacles of technology transfer in the upstream domain, infrastructures such as the research and technology centers, the role of technology transfer in the upstream contracts, relationship between educational and research centers with oil companies and contractors, and the bonuses in contracts regarding technology transfer should be strengthened and highlighted. In short, the contribution of this effort is twofold; first is to explore and find the impediments in technology transfer in the upstream contracts, and the second is to provide proper solutions for the upstream contracts to avoid or reduce the effects of these challenges.