National Oil Companies and Climate Politics

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Controlling over half of global oil and gas production, accounting for 40% of oil and gas investment, and with rights over two-thirds of proven reserves, National Oil Companies (NOCs) are key to determining whether the world meets its climate targets. NOCs are partially or fully government-owned oil and gas companies, whose relationships with host states lead to the mixing of commercial and political rationales. However, efforts to decarbonize NOCs have so far mostly been timid, even by the rather underwhelming standards of oil majors. In addition, as powerful players in their domestic political economies, NOCs have often blocked climate action by their governments. Yet, within the universe of NOCs, there has been substantial variation in involvement in climate action, ranging from comprehensive decarbonization strategies in some of the more forward-looking NOCs, to doubling down on oil investments and blocking climate action in others.

Understanding NOCs’ motivations in pursuing climate action inevitably requires coming to terms with the variety of arrangements governing the state-NOC relationship, as well as the national climate policy and climate institutions within which this relationship is embedded. It also requires placing NOCs in the context of a greening global economy. These different dimensions of NOCs’ involvement in climate politics will be addressed in the proposed panel, which will bring together researchers working on NOCs’ climate politics from a comparative perspective, covering all regions of the developing world. The panel will feature qualitative and quantitative research documenting the trends and drivers of NOCs’ climate action, including climate discourses, decarbonization policy, and the dilemmas posed by recent oil discoveries in a greening global economy.

Besides NOCs’ efforts to influence the climate policies of their host states, the panel will seek to understand the meaning of decarbonization for NOCs, and oil producers more broadly. This requires identifying how, in different contexts, characteristics such as resource bases, importer or exporter status, or their institutional capabilities shape the hybrid political-commercial calculus underpinning NOCs’ climate action. It also requires breaking NOCs’ decarbonization efforts and respective outcomes into more granular components, including the varieties of strategies to reduce operational emissions and the nature of NOCs’ investments in renewable energy sectors.

The panel will comprise research covering NOCs’ climate politics at distinct levels of aggregation and deploying varied research methodologies. We will thereby contribute to scholarship on the comparative politics and international political economy of an underexplored dimension of global climate policy. Moreover, by bringing in cases from the developing world, where most NOCs are located, the panel will fill a gap in ongoing debates on the comparative politics of climate change, which tend to neglect the world regions that are most vulnerable to changing climate patterns.

Sub Unit

• Division 39: Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics

Individual Presentations

• National Oil Companies and Climate Discourses in Russia and Kazakhstan - Ellie Martus, Griffith University; Marianna Poberezhskaya, Nottingham Trent University; Marat Karatayev, University of Graz

• National Oil Companies and the Politics of Renewable Energy in Brazil and Angola - Nicolas Lippolis, Columbia University

• Late to the Party: The Challenge of Discovering Oil in the 21st Century - Iasmin Goes, Colorado State University

• Decarbonization from the Commanding Heights: Comparing Emerging Economies - Faris AlSulayman; Edmund Downie, Princeton University; Mengye Zhu, Center for Global Sustainability, University of Maryland

Chair

• Kathryn Hochstetler LSE

Discussant

• Jazmin Sierra University of Notre Dame