Beyond ownership structures: oil company climate discourses in authoritarian Russia and Kazakhstan

Martus, E, Poberezhskaya, M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6442-5292, Karatayev, M and Novikova, E, 2026. Beyond ownership structures: oil company climate discourses in authoritarian Russia and Kazakhstan. Energy Research and Social Science, 133: 104582. ISSN 2214-6296

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Abstract

Oil companies play a central role in global climate politics, yet existing research provides a limited understanding of how corporate climate strategies vary across ownership structures and political systems. This article addresses this gap though a comparative study of private and state-owned oil companies in Russia and Kazakhstan. Both are authoritarian states, major global oil producers, significant greenhouse gas emitters, and are highly dependent on fossil fuel exports. Using a most-similar system design, the analysis draws on an extensive range of publicly available corporate documents in English, Russian and Kazakh, to examine how oil companies (private and state-owned) have responded to climate change, and how these discourses interact with national climate agendas. Comparing discursive framings on climate change across countries and ownership types, the findings show that authoritarian state priorities strongly shape climate discourses, overshadowing differences generated by both private and state-owned companies. Unlike their Western counterparts that are driven primarily by financial and reputational interests, in Russia and Kazakhstan, both private and state-owned companies largely align their climate narratives with national political goals, limiting the scope for independent or market-driven climate positioning. Broadly, this article advances understanding of how political context shapes corporate climate behaviour. It demonstrates that in authoritarian fossil fuel states, national politics takes centre stage in structuring corporate engagement with climate change, with important implications for global climate governance.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Energy Research and Social Science
Creators:	Martus, E., Poberezhskaya, M., Karatayev, M. and Novikova, E.
Publisher:	Elsevier
Date:	March 2026
Volume:	133
ISSN:	2214-6296
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1016/j.erss.2026.104582 DOI S2214629626000538 Publisher Item Identifier 2572727 Other
Rights:	© 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Melissa Cornwell
Date Added:	12 Feb 2026 11:24
Last Modified:	12 Feb 2026 11:24
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/55248

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