Supporting Economic Development Initiatives in Local Communities: A Case Study in the Latin American Region

Abstract

This paper outlines an oilfield services company's approach to supporting local economic development in areas surrounding an oilfield project in the Latin American region. The paper describes how the company identified local community needs and committed resources to contribute to sustainable economic improvements. Both the community and the company benefit from local economic development. Communities benefit from the stimulation of robust and varied local business enterprise development, which helps to improve local employment opportunities. The company benefits include meeting regulated local content targets. A long-term view of developing the local economy was taken. The oilfield services company partnered with the operator to promote learning and fund programs to build local workforce capacity. The company also partnered with businesses in collaboration with local authorities, educational establishments and non-governmental organizations. To understand the community needs, the company worked with the operator to prepare an inventory of relevant community assets for economic development, and map stakeholders such as educational establishments, NGOs, local contractors and registered business associations, which constituted the baseline. Rather than taking the lead on the project, the company adopted a multi-stakeholder process to development involvement of the local communities. This approach allowed the project to benefit from the various stakeholder contributions for example social investment, training, capability building and know-how transfer. This collaborative approach enabled the company to develop and implement a targeted local economic development plan for the area of operations. The paper describes the company framework, assessment approach and design of specific initiatives to promote local economic development. The paper demonstrates how a risk and outcomes based approach can be used to progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 4, 8) that are most relevant to a company's operations.