Foundation for corporate social responsibility under the petroleum industry Act 2021

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has garnered the interest of numerous management and legal researchers over time. Unfortunately, there has not been any agreement among academics about how CSR would affect corporate performances hence the relationship between the two has proven contentious. Prior to the enactment of the PIA 2021, there was an unending debate as to whether CSR should be made voluntary or mandatory. With the emergence of the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, the issue has now been settled as corporate social responsibility is now mandatory for every settlor. The authors therefore argued that corporate social responsibility being a fundamental part of the oil and gas sector has been subjected to diverse discussion, following the enactment of the Act. They maintained as a matter of fact, that the Act contained various definitions without end, which for instance, provided in S. 240 of the PIA as mandatory for every settlor to contribute 3% of her actual annual operating expenditure of the preceding financial year in the upstream petroleum operations to the host communities for the development of the host community, with sanction-provisions for noncompliance. The paper therefore concluded that the PIA 2021 as good as it sounds, did not provide for other communities that are not oil producing communities, directly affected by the activities of the settlor, that is, gas flaring, but rather focused only on oil-producing companies that operated in the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry within the host communities.