Reformulate Central and Local Government Relations in Hydrocarbon Management

Building a good legal framework in oil is highly links with the country’s interest to uplift the role of oil in national energy mix and reducing the dependency on import. Oil legal framework has exhibited many problems throughout time; these include delivering the public rights to participate in the decision-making process and information access. It is argued that reforming the central-local government relationship in oil could be an instrument to address such oil legal framework problems. The paper discusses how the oil legal framework translated “the state right to control” over time. Literature analysis is used to justify the research argumentation. Oil legal framework linked to other related framework of regulation, includes central-local relationship. This paper highlights the need to reformulate the central-local relationship in the oil management perspective by giving the local government a wider room to deliver public-participation rights and information access. This approach could be taken by reforming the central-local relationship legal framework as well as oil. The paper limits the discussion on how the state right to control oil has been implemented throughout the time. This paper reveals that the oil management perspective has not shifted much from the period before the independence to now. Although it appeared in many forms, centralism was paramount in regulating oil, and less concern was given to solving the issue of central-local relationships. This research is vital to yield policy recommendations that could be referenced to build the future central-local relationship platform that balances the central-local government interests in oil and recognises community rights. It is proposed to influence more research on how the community rights and central-local relationship should be part of the oil legal framework.