Anthropologists, Corporate Responsibility and Oil in Ecuador and Nigeria

Abstract

State-owned national oil companies (NOCs) now control 90% of the world’s conventional petroleum resources. As a result, private companies have increasingly focused on projects located in marginal areas that are often inhabited by indigenous, tribal and minority groups. Drawing on 15 years of experience as advisors to international hydrocarbon companies, we present two case studies involving minority groups in Ecuador and Nigeria. Despite different circumstances, these case studies highlight common challenges faced by social scientists in the oil and gas industry: how to win “broad community support” in places where local leaders may represent only factions, their families or themselves; how to provide real, long-term community benefits; how to resist assuming the role of government despite multiple pressures to do so. Our case studies examine two efforts to address such challenges and provide useful lessons on the limits of corporate social responsibility initiatives.