ABSTRACT
The oil-gathering industry was shown earlier to be composed of the oil companies and the offshore oil supply firms that provide intermediate goods and services inputs to the oil companies. Virtually all of the oil companies and many of the leading firms in the supply industry operate multinationally, and this has created the somewhat unusual feature in a globally organized industry as both the buyers and the sellers operate as internationalized producers – connected to one another through market relationships simultaneously in several locations. (This is more unusual in the oil-gathering industry's manufactures branch rather than its service branch, as there are several examples of service industries being organized on a similar basis – see Chapter 5.) The objective of this chapter is to point out some of the more important consequences of the globalization of the supply industry for the economic development of localities and the wider national economies that have been chosen as service bases for offshore oil provinces.
