Indra Overland and Nina Poussenka. Russian oil companies in an evolving world: the challenge of change
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BOOK REVIEW
Indra Overland and Nina Poussenka. Russian oil companies in an evolving world: the challenge of change Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020 Richard Smardon 1 Accepted: 11 September 2020 / Published online: 22 September 2020 # AESS 2020
Abstract This book is a geopolitical examination of five Russian oil companies ability for change given social, political and environmental contexts. Specific attention is given to how these five companies have evolved over time, their transparency or lack thereof, and how they have handled the energy transitions of shale oil revolution, offshore oil and energy markets. On the surface this book appears to be an energy policy and business management book, but energy companies around the world are major drivers impacting climate, energy consumption as well as geopolitics (Considine and Paik 2018; Katusa 2014; Yergin 2009, 2012). This is particularly true for Russia (Gustafson 2017; Rossbach 2018) and the US (Katusa 2014).
This book is especially of interest to this reviewer as he has taught interdisciplinary sustainable management courses within a business school (Smardon et al. 2019) and has done research on how companies represent themselves in terms of social, environmental, and economic sustainability (Bae and Smardon 2011). The authors Indra Overland and Nina Poussenka, from Norway and Russia, respectively, have solid backgrounds in energy policy and international affairs. The authors state that the book was written to answer two questions: 1. How are Russian oil companies reacting to the global context? 2. How are companies themselves changing? The authors’ working hypothesis is that the Russian oil companies are not good at foreseeing or adapting to change (Overland and Poussenka 2020, 2). The first chapter in the book lays out the context for the analysis of the five Russian oil companies. The five oil
* Richard Smardon [email protected] 1
Department of Environmental Studies, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA
companies are the largest in terms of Russian oil production. Each company is reviewed given two sets of topics: & &
Group 1 addresses Arctic and offshore oil extraction, internationalization, transparency, and innovation. Group 2 compares the company’s adaptability to a changing global environment and their responses to shale oil, oil price volatility, sanctions, and climate policy.
Chapter two covers Rosneft—the Russian national oil company. The authors track the expansion, contractions, and corporate history from the 1990s to the current time. Rosneft according to the authors is the “Tyrannosaurus rex of the Russian petroleum sector” (Overland and Poussenka 2020, 24). The company profile includes offshore operations, shale resources, and sustainability reporting. The latter is of particular interest—is the company’s sustainability report mere window dressing or is the company moving toward more social and environmentally responsible practices? The authors report that in recent years that there have be
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