This article focuses on the participatory
rights of local people living in the areas of extensive oil industry
operations in the Izhemskii district of the Komi Republic in Russia. The
district has long been suffering from oil leaks and resulting negative
environmental impacts. Lukoil-Komi bought the business directly after
the Soviet era and inherited the ecological threats related to old and
rusty pipelines. Lukoil-Komi has promised to put things in order, but a
great deal remains to be done.

This article scrutinizes how
statutory law and private governance interact in protecting the
participatory rights of local people living in the vicinity of oil
production in Komi. First, we evaluate what participatory rights Russian
legislation guarantees to local people when oil production arrives in a
new area or when new wells are being explored or opened. Second, we
elaborate how the major oil company in the region – Lukoil-Komi –
fulfills its corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the area of
participatory rights and how local people feel about their possibility
to exercise their participatory rights. As participatory rights, we
discuss both procedural justice with public hearings and distributive
justice in the form of benefit-sharing between the company and local
community. The wider perspective on participation is due to Russian CSR
practices. In Russia, companies tend to earn their Social License to
Operate (SLO) through benefit-sharing, often within private governance.
This practice is based on the social partnership agreements between
authorities and companies. These contracts have path-dependent features
resembling earlier Soviet solutions. The same can be claimed to apply to
a wider SLO with more focus on local communities. We argue that
Lukoil-Komi has not yet been able to achieve an SLO (local acceptance)
due to the lack of participatory rights and continuing environmental
problems. Most local people are not willing to trade a clean environment
and participatory rights for the social benefits the company offers.
However, the social partnership agreement concluded between Lukoil-Komi
and a local NGO, Izvatas, could be a step forward in achieving a local
SLO.