Book excerpt: Until this book was published little had appeared on the matter of the organization of production in oil gathering. This book: Describes the global offshore oil supply industry and its features on one of the world’s major offshore oil services bases Draws on the theory of the multinational corporation to explain why buyers and sellers should have internationalized themselves into a symbiotic relationship Discusses the preference of the oil companies for vertical disintegration Explains the transaction cost paradigm Integrates the largely American literature on the transaction cost paradigm with the literature on the multinational corporation (which is largely British).