ABSTRACT
All hydrocarbon resources in the soil and subsoil, in internal waters and in the territorial sea, on the continental shelf and in the exclusive economic zone come under the jurisdiction of the state. However, not all states have easy access to development investment or the technical expertise in the task of finding and extracting hydrocarbons. In these cases, such states delegate these operations to an international oil company (IOC) or, in some cases, to a domestic one. The relationship between the state and the international oil company must then be regulated by international law or domestic legal instruments and, in some cases, by contract. The most important parts of such a relationship are the licence, the concession, the production-sharing agreement (PSA), and the service contract.
