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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the approach of oil companies from traditional global powers and emerging powers frames patterns of competition and cooperation between these oil companies in exporting countries, and how these patterns create threats and opportunities for both exporters and oil companies.

Paper long abstract:

The increasing multipolarisation of the global order has prompted a new scramble for oil and gas resources in Africa. While this race has traditionally been among Western International Oil Companies (IOCs), China and other emerging powers have forayed into this struggle with mostly State-Owned IOCs. Focusing on Nigeria, the paper examines how the nature and approach of IOCs create threats and opportunities in terms of:

(1) The dynamics of distribution of oil proceeds among the oil companies (access/licenses/profits), national elites (harmonization vs. fragmentation of elites in the distribution of oil rents) and local population (impact of the distribution of oil resources on poverty and inequality);

(2) The structural economic impact on the domestic political economy of Nigeria (i.e. oil-based enclave vs. diversified economy) and at the global level (a hierarchy of states where oil exporters remain at the fringe of the global economic order, as suppliers of energy resources).

The paper concludes on the position that more effective institutions are required at the national level (Nigeria's Petroleum Industry Bill - PIB), regional level (ECOWAS, AU) and global level (Dodd-Frank Act, EU legislation, BRIC treaties to regulate IOCs) to ensure egalitarian distribution of oil rents within exporting countries, to develop linkages to non-oil sectors, to minimize capture of rents by societal forces and to provide a level playing field for all IOCs; to give African energy exporters more bargaining power at the regional level vis-à-vis IOCs and to institute an effective regime of global governance at the global level.