Environmental and socio-economic policies in oil and gas regions: triple bottom line approach

Abstract

Sustainability is a critical issue for resource-rich countries encountering environmental and social problems in remote regions and struggling to overcome the national economy’s reliance on the oil and gas industry. We explore, through a case study of Russian oil-producing regions, the interdependency of economic, social and environmental issues by analysing the trade-offs between the need to adopt new technology to combat gas flaring and the demand for socio-economic policies. The findings suggest that international companies can serve as effective vectors for promoting gas flaring technologies if regional governments take a flexible integrated approach to socio-economic and environmental policies formulation.