Reviewing Governments' Approaches to Joint Oil Field Integration Agreements

Today, most of the world's oil and gas fields are located along the borders of two or more countries. Exploitation and extraction from these common fields has been one of the most controversial issues of the host countries of these fields and reservoirs. In particular, the lack of a specific and comprehensive procedure has added to disagreements. Today, countries have resorted to various methods of joint exploitation to prevent or at least reduce such disagreements. One of these very useful methods is the exploitation through the integration contract. In this method, the host countries of the common fields or reservoirs agree that the field should be considered as a single unit and its operation should be done in a coordinated and integrated manner. Given the diversity of integration agreements, it can be said that there is a uniform procedure for these agreements. The question that can be asked in this article is whether there is a uniform procedure for joint exploitation agreements and integration of oil fields agreements between governments? This article examines in a descriptive-analytical manner the hypothesis that countries often use bilateral and multilateral agreements for integration and joint exploitation to exploit their common oil and gas fields. Although these agreements are very diverse in terms of geography and the clauses used in them, they seem to follow an almost fixed pattern.