Transnational Oil Companies Research Articles

Resource Based Conflict and Climate Change in the Niger Delta Region, Nigeria

The study examined the effects of climate change on the local economy occasioned by resource-based conflict in the Niger Delta region, Nigeria. The alteration in weather conditions in the Niger Delta region is associated with anthropogenic activities of the transnational oil companies for over five decades in the Niger Delta region, Nigeria. Despite the degree of oil exploration and exploitation, the Niger Delta region remained underdeveloped in social amenities. The inhabitants were deprived and alienated from the Petrodollar benefits. The launching of artisanal refining by the locals as a way of getting from Petro Dollar business became inevitable. These activities have increased greenhouse gas emission leading to the alteration in weather conditions in the Region Sadly, the Joint Military Task Force deployed to monitor and arrest culprit bombard and burn down the artisanal refining equipment unprofessionally, thereby increasing greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere. Given the above, the Niger Delta inhabitants are experiencing alteration in weather condition leading to poor agricultural harvest. The study adopted Frustration/Aggression theoretical as its framework. The study relied on primary through questionnaires and interview, while secondary sources data was through journals, books, newspapers, among others. The study unraveled that resource-based conflict occasioned deprivation and frustration increased greenhouse gas emission. The study recommends amongst others convening a climate change summit that will involve all the stakeholders in the oil activities in the Region.

Investigating and Comparing Petroleum Contract Models from Effective Control Lens in Contracts

Selecting the suitable petroleum contract pattern is one of the most sensitive in oil activities after the initial petroleum negotiations, whereas different petroleum contracts have emerged due to the willingness of the host government to grant control and oversight of petroleum activity to the International Oil Company. The right to control effectively is the key to earning more and longer-term profit and impact on project economics for each of the parties. Occasionally, this right to effective control creates a major challenge for host countries and international and transnational oil companies. In the meantime, domestic law requirements play an important role along with the willingness of governments to maintain or grant effective control.

Priming the Well: “Frackademia” and the Corporate Pipeline of Oil and Gas Funding into Higher Education

While fossil fuel interests have long played a powerful role in shaping American politics and culture, in recent decades, transnational oil and gas companies have formed hundreds of “partnerships” with American colleges and universities to fund energy research and development. Moreover, oil and gas interests have established a foothold in major universities by sponsoring research conferences, scholarships, science centers, and laboratories addressing technological advances in hydraulic fracturing methods, including leasing land for drilling on university-owned property. In this article, I critically assess some of the broad economic linkages between fossil fuel companies and higher education in the United States and the role that corporate philanthropy plays today in expanding the profits and power of the oil and gas industry, as well as the financial base and academic stature of select colleges and universities. Finally, I draw some preliminary conclusions about the growing colonization of university space and other public institutions by energy corporations.

Piercing the corporate veil: Towards a better assessment of the position of transnational oil and gas companies in the global carbon budget

In recent years, research in climate science has increasingly emphasized the need to reduce fossil fuel supply in order to avoid an overshoot of the global carbon budget and to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep global warming ‘well below 2°C’. This article aims to outline a balanced appreciation of the particular responsibility held by transnational oil and gas companies in the global challenge to organize an equitably managed decline in fossil fuel extraction. It does so by focusing on a case study. The latter consists of the stylized reconstruction of the internal social dynamics that shape the power structure of the French firm Total and of questioning its ability to make investment decisions aligned with the imperative to preserve the stability of the climate system, as its public position makes clear. The persistence of short-termed compensation schemes in the higher corporate hierarchy impedes the elaboration and implementation of deep decarbonization strategies at the firm level. These would imply a significant upscaling of investments in renewable energy and/or carbon-capture storage technologies, in order to avoid the foreseeable destruction of corporate jobs linked to oil and gas extraction in an increasingly carbon-constrained world.

ЕНЕРГЕТИЧНІ ПРОЕКТИ АЗЕРБАЙДЖАНУ ТА ГРУЗІЇ

After the restoration of the state independence of Azerbaijan, one of the main goals was to use natural resources freely, in the interests of the Azerbaijani people and state. Since the early 1990’s, several western companies have begun to show interest in the energy sources of the Caspian region. In the first years of independence, certain steps were taken to obtain energy resources and bring them to the world market. The “Contract of the Century” concluded on September 20, 1994, with 11 transnational oil companies worldwide, which laid the foundation of the oil strategy proposed by national leader Heydar Aliyev, allowed Azerbaijan to play an important role in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region, turning it into one of the international centers for the production of energy resources. After the signing of the “Contract of the Century”, the key issue was finding favorable ways for oil and gas transit. The choice of Georgia as a transit country would meet the interests of Azerbaijan. Starting from 1999, the first oil was transported via the Baku-Supsa pipeline, and from 2006 on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan main export oil pipeline. Transportation of gas, along with oil, is carried out through Georgia. Gas is transported to Georgia by the end of 2006 through the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline and from June 2007 to Turkey. The Southern Gas Corridor, which is probably the largest gas pipeline project put forward by Azerbaijan, involving Georgia, delivers the Shahdeniz Phase 2 gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe. The South Caucasus Pipeline Project Expansion, part of this project, encompasses the construction of new pipelines and associated facilities in both Azerbaijan and Georgia. The opening ceremony of the first phase of the Southern Gas Corridor project was held at Sangachal Terminal on May 29, 2018. Within the framework of the AGRI (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania Interconnector) project, which is one of the energy projects connecting Azerbaijan and Georgia, it is planned to transport natural gas through the pipeline to the Black Sea shores of Georgia, where it will be liquefied and transported by tankers to the terminal in Romania’s Constanta port and then to the gas infrastructure of Romania and other European countries in the form of natural gas. Georgia is not only a transit country for Azerbaijan, but also one of the largest consumers of hydrocarbon reserves. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) has been operating in Georgia since 2006. SOCAR's activities in Georgia are carried out through “SOCAR Georgia Petroleum”, “SOCAR Gas Export-Import”, “SOCAR Georgia Gas”, “SOCAR Georgia Gas Distribution”, “Black Sea Terminal” and others.

Obstruction as Power: Rethinking Britain's Caucasus Occupation 1918–20

ABSTRACTThis article draws on French and British archival sources to rethink the history of Britain's 1918--1920 occupation of the Caucasus. The extant historiography casts London as eager to reinvigorate the region's oil exports in order to buoy its own supplies, but this article suggests that various elements within and close to the British administration sought to obstruct oil exports. Preventing Caucasus oil from reaching global markets seems to have helped parts of the British administration reach their aims during negotiations with the French government and Royal Dutch Shell. It also improved the viability of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company by denying valuable oil supplies to rival firms. Acknowledging the British oil interests that steered state policies during this period allows a richer story to unfold, one that demonstrates how imperial power in the wake of the Great War could be brought to serve the aims of, and even adopt the methods of, transnational oil companies operating in an emerging global fuel market.

Resource Nationalism Specter Hovers Over The Oil Industry: The Transnational Corporate Strategy To Tackle Resource Nationalism Risks

Resource nationalism is building momentum across oil-endowed countries. Transnational corporations (TNCs) have to effectively address the emerging scenarios that are caused by the resurgence in resource nationalism. This is clearly a diserable focus that has received much attention in the literature on government-business relations ever since the oil nationalization of the 1970s. But there is limited literature that provides a synthesized view on the transnational oil companies’ (TNOC) strategies to tackle resource nationalism risk; this leaves a gap in the literature where the paper aims to contribute. The paper explores the exclusive literature on resource nationalism and the activities of TNOCs, and from this literature engages in conceptual development. The paper focuses on the notion of resource nationalism and its implications on TNOCs’ activities in host states. This paper provides policy guidelines, suggesting the ways in which the major TNOCs can respond with robust responsible and sustainable programs to the resource nationalism in the global oil industry.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LARGE OIL COMPANIES AND THE RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR

An important target of the European Union and national governments is to increase the contribution of renewable energy to the total energy supply. According to numerous estimates, the proportion of renewable energy sources of the global energy consumption could reach 15 to 20 percent by the middle of the 21 th century; moreover the total amount of investments in renewable energy sources could be 2.5 times greater than the current level. This increased investment is definitely achievable due to the significant interventions of governments. However, the decrease of the share of fossil fuels in the global energy consumption seems rather doubtful because it partly depends on how the future visions of transnational oil companies handle renewables. In this paper, I examine the characteristics of the renewable energy investments of the Supermajors, the largest public oil companies. I also examine how their communications regarding renewables meet reality. The results indicate that certain companies firmly deny investments in the renewable energy sector (because of the lower-than-expected returns), while others superficially address them, and that there is only one company that has globally important renewable energy businesses.

EXTRACTION OFFSHORE, POLITICS INSHORE, AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA

ABSTRACTRecent economic and socio-political dynamics in the territories that form Equatorial Guinea are related, in different ways, to the extraction of hydrocarbons from its Exclusive Economic Zone since the mid-1990s. These transformations are strongly mediated by specific social groups, especially the family that has held power since 1968 and transnational oil companies, whose relationships are central to the exclusive political configuration in the country. The article analyses this particular form of extraversion of power as part of a broader history of the region, in which the role of the state's sovereignty as articulated during decolonization is shown to be instrumental in the allocation of rights and the political economy of oil today. The article also discusses the spaces that the new political economy of oil has opened for alternative transnational connections around the country.

Violation of Human Rights in Nigeria: An Appraisal of the Activities of the Transnational Oil Corporations in the Niger Delta Region

Non state actors play a significant role in international relations. They do not hold the characteristics of a legal sovereign but have some measure of control over a country's people and territories. Transnational corporations are non states actors with profit motive that operate in different sovereign states and continents in the world deriving their power most of the time from the law of these states. Economists, lawyers and social scientists alike have for a number of years agreed that foreign investments like TNCs have the potential to act as a catalyst for the promotion or violation of human rights, particularly in developing countries. This is even more so,
 considering that corporate investors are often not explicitly obliged under investment agreements to observe human rights even though they exert
 considerable power over individuals, communities and indigenous populations. Such assertions have strengthened the normative link between human rights violations and the activities of transnational corporations like the oil companies. It is on this premise that this paper
 discusses how the activities of transnational oil corporations in the Niger Delta region have led to violations of human rights and examines how the federal government of Nigeria through legislation has empowered these transnational oil companies to engage in activities that lead directly to such flagrant violation of human rights.

Community Expectations from Ghana's New Oil Find: Conceptualizing Corporate Social Responsibility as a Grassroots-Oriented Process

The discovery of oil comes with many positive expectations from governments and citizens, but evidence of conflict- and problem-ridden resource-rich countries defies conventional knowledge—which suggests that abundance in resources culminates in socioeconomic blessings. Ghana recently joined the list of oil-producing countries, with oil production expected to reach 250,000 barrels per day in the next year or two; however, while transnational oil companies and the domestic government have begun making gains from this discovery, one of the nearby communities, Cape Three Points, is far removed from the rest of the country in access to basic amenities. This paper argues for corporate social responsibility to be more grassroots-oriented, premised on the position that it is supremely important for extractive companies to adopt policies of social and environmental sustainability.

The importance of transnational corporations in the supply of oil to Europe: Implications

This paper analyzes the positioning of European and American transnational oil companies in the supply of oil from outside Europe to European countries. The analysis focuses on the triangular relationship between: the control that these companies exercise over oil refining and the marketing of petroleum products in Europe; the international production of crude by these companies in oil regions; and the import of crude oil by European countries. Two indicators were developed to assess the relevance of these large corporations: (a) the extent of the supply to their European refineries via their own international production, and (b) the contribution of each company to the total crude oil imports received by six European countries.

Globalization, Petroluem Industry and Sustainable Development: The Implication for Nigeria

International trade in petroleum products has expanded significantly over the past decades through globalization such that the price of crude oil is measured or represented at the global price level. As the international trade in petroleum products keep increasing, there is also corresponding increase in activities in the petroleum industry to meet the requirement of the ever increasing demand for petroleum products. Globalization raises serious sustainability issues particularly in most developing countries where exploration and production are undertaken. This article is mainly concerned with globalisation and the sustainability issues which exploration and production of oil and gas raise in Nigeria as exporter of crude oil. This article raises some fundamental question such as: can the environment and the ecosystem in developing countries like Nigeria stand the ever increasing demand for petroleum products as a direct consequence of globalization? Can the present oil and gas environmental regime achieve sustainable oil and gas exploration and production in Nigeria? Will the transnational oil companies operating in Nigeria that are more interested in return on investment and increased shareholders dividends adopt significant reforms under the present legal regime that will ensure sustainable oil and gas exploration and production? What does the future hold for generations unborn in the face of globalisation and unsustainable pattern of oil and gas exploration and production in Nigeria?

Contradiction of space, centralization of capital, and the hybrid state oil company: The case of Russia

A new species of capital has emerged from the development of inter-capitalist competition in the oil industry. Oil-producing states have fused with financial and productive/extractive capital, foreign and domestic, into hybrid state oil companies. These are centralized monopolies that transcend the historical geographical opposition between private transnational oil companies and national oil companies. As partially nationalized state monopolies, they allow oil-producing states access to global capital markets, while retaining the control of the state over the flow of foreign capital into the domestic oil industry. They thus mediate the contradiction between the integration of capital at the transnational level and its territorial fragmentation at the national scale, only to internalize it in the process. I examine this process in the case of the ongoing consolidation of the Russian oil industry under state control, focusing on two inter-related contradictions: an attempt by the Russian state to liberalize the oil industry, yet shield it against the expansion and control of foreign oil companies; and the dependence of the state on foreign financial capital in the very process of consolidating control over the oil industry.

The Rentier State: Oil-related Legislation And Conflict In The Niger Delta, Nigeria

Oil presents a horrendous paradox in Nigeria. It provides enormous wealth and means of patronage to the rentier state and its joint venture partners, the transnational oil companies. However, to large sections of the local oil-bearing communities, the commodity is mainly a source of anxiety and misery. Dating from colonial history, the state has made systematic and sustained efforts to disfactor the local oil-bearing Niger Delta communities from asserting or holding any consequential stakes in the oil resources underneath their soil. In this ironic political game, the state employs the unmitigated paraphernalia of law and public policy to privilege itself and its business partners primarily within the oil industry. This leaves the local oil-bearing communities with limited breathing space, hence, their massive resort to violent protests. This study critically examines the emergence of the contemporary rentier state and how the latter mobilizes and exploits the instrumentality of rule making to entrench and advance its rent-seeking interests in the Nigerian oil economy. The rent-seeking interests and devices of the federal state not only underlie but also complicate the oil conflict.

Petrobusiness and Security Threats in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

This study derives from a concern with the Nigerian oil conflict. It focuses on the paradigm shift and various methods of conflict management practised in the oil industry, especially among the more dominant transnational oil companies (TNOCs). The article is primarily based on a field study of the three largest TNOCs in Nigeria – Shell, Mobil and Chevron. The study reveals that different oil companies operating in the Niger Delta adopt different conflict management strategies depending on the precise nature and intensity of the threats concerned, which are, in turn, largely related to the locational spread or concentration of the individual firm's oil operations. The upsurge and intensification of violent anti-oil protests in the oil-bearing communities since the 1990s have compelled petrobusiness to explore new paradigms of security communitization, security privatization, security corporatization and securitization of development. The paradigm shift, as the study demonstrates, has considerable implications for both the oil conflict and security in the Nigerian oil region.

Adoption of international environmental standards by transnational oil companies: reducing the impact of oil operations in emerging economies : Wawryk, A. S. Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, 2002, 20, (4)

Adoption of international environmental standards by transnational oil companies: reducing the impact of oil operations in emerging economies : Wawryk, A. S. Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, 2002, 20, (4)

Adoption of International Environmental Standards by Transnational Oil Companies: Reducing the Impact of Oil Operations in Emerging Economies

In the absence of adequate environmental laws and enforcement in emerging economies, there have been calls for oil companies voluntarily to adopt ‘best practice’ in emerging economies. This article examines five environmental practices that can be seen as ‘best practice’ through their endorsement in national and international oil industry association guidelines, and which will, when adequately implemented, reduce the negative impacts of oil exploration and production.

The Problem of Change and Reorganisation of the One-Party Dictatorship in Congo

Democratisation, a Buzzword Since the beginning of the 90s has been the buzzword for donors as well as agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank. However, we have also seen the come to a stop in several cases toppled by old leaders coming back to power, either through election or by armed force. This has been the case in The Congo (Brazzaville) in 1997.2 Since October 15,1997, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the President of the former socialist one-party state has been back in power. He won the civil war with help from France and Angola,3 and perhaps also from other African leaders. It seems as if the democratisation process in the Congo has come to an end. The process of political and economic reorganisation of the society that started with the new constitution of 1991 has been interrupted. I assume, however, that the process of democratisation is not so easy to stop and that Sassou-Nguesso cannot return to the way he ruled Congo during the 1980s. Concurrently, the Central Africa region is undergoing a tremendous change and the political landscape is being transformed. South Africa is becoming more and more influential, the traditional influence from the West is changing. The position of the USA and France is not clear, and it is difficult to judge whether their influence is as strong as it used to be. Laurent Desiree Kabila in DRCongo has for instance sought support from states like China and Libya. But the influence from the different transnational oil-companies is indisputable. In this paper, I intend to discuss the reorganisation of Congolese society that started in 1991 with the transitional government. Congo managed, in 1991, to engage in a National Conference without bloodshed, and then, in 1992, a transitional government was launched to prepare for democratic elections. I shall

Transnational oil companies and natural gas in developing countries: The implications of the fiscal regime

This paper reviews the suitability of different fiscal regimes for natural gas exploration and development projects in developing countries. The paper starts with a brief discussion of the role of transnational oil companies in the development of this resource. The implications of different taxes including royalties, profit taxes, the resource rent tax, and acquisition of equity are discussed. Also covered are the consequences of the tax system of the home country of the transnational oil company, and the effects of different ring fences. It is likely that some form of progressive tax or progressive production-sharing arrangement will be most appropriate for natural gas in the Third World. This should start with initial tax rates below that of oil to reflect the additional risks associated with gas.