Rights and Responsibilities: Sustainability and Stakeholder Relations in the Russian Oil and Gas Sector

Abstract

Oil and gas industry expansion into arctic waters is a high-profile concern for global sustainability, although factors such as the price of oil and the prospects for gas marketization have slowed the rate of expansion in recent years. Less attention is currently paid to some of the major onshore oil and gas developments in the Russian North, where production is ongoing, often since Soviet times, and in many cases with significant impacts on fragile arctic ecosystems. Such projects also have considerable (positive and negative) social impacts for Russia’s indigenous and local populations, many of whom depend on the land and waters of oil-bearing regions for their livelihoods. Thus, the sustainability of Russia’s arctic oil and gas industry is of critical importance whether or not the activities are taking place offshore in the glare of international scrutiny. Usinsk Rayon (county) in Russia’s Komi Republic grabbed international headlines in 1994 with one of the world’s biggest oil spill disasters, but today is much less well known internationally, despite continuing to suffer regular spills. This article explores the current situation in Usinsk Rayon, comparing global sustainability standards and companies’ understandings of their own responsibilities to society with the ways that ‘corporate social responsibility’ in practice is perceived locally. The paper concludes that there is a need for local people to redefine the ‘social licence’ that determines relations between communities, government and industry, so as to break the expectation that environmental pollution can be traded off for social benefits.