Introduction
In my New Year’s Day column this year I had indicated there are three policy priorities which seemingly guide government’s preparations for the development of its impending oil and gas-based extraction sector. If these priorities are interpreted in their broadest sense, they could be expressed as 1) establishing a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) and, relatedly, designing a fiscal regime for the sector; 2) providing a governance framework, which is based on international best-practices; along with a dedicated or stand-alone regulatory commission for the extractive sector; and seeking membership of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) as two main institutional planks; and 3) legislating/regulating/prescribing local content requirements (LCRs) that would operate along the sector’s entire value chain.