Mapping the oil elite web: Elite network embeddedness and firm-territory relations of the UK oil industry

Abstract

The oil and gas industry remains central to global production and consumption, wielding significant economic and political power. This power stems not only from the strategic value of its resources but also from the industry’s embedded social power. This paper conceptualizes and analyzes this social embeddedness through the lens of elite network embeddedness. It opens up the black box of the firms at the top of the oil and gas industry and highlights the importance of human agency, in particular the corporate directors in charge of the firms. Building on economic geography and economic sociology literature, we explore how lead oil and gas (O&G) firms are socially and territorially embedded through their directors’ elite ties, focusing on the O&G sector of the UK Continental Shelf in the North Sea (UKCS). Sourcing firm and people data from BoardEx (2016–2020), we utilize social network analysis and complementary qualitative research (e.g. semi-structured interviews). We find that lead firms with significant control of O&G assets in the UK are embedded in extensive national and transnational corporate networks and extensively connected to politics and policy planning through elite networks. We also find US elite ties to be dominant across these three domains, highlighting the continuing influence of US elite power structures within the UKCS oil sector even as US O&G firms have significantly reduced their operations in the North Sea. This study hence offers a new perspective on how firm-territory relations of the UKCS O&G industry are geographically and societally embedded through elite networks.

Introduction

The importance of the oil and gas industry (O&G) can hardly be overstated. It is still at the heart of most global production and consumption patterns and thus a key strategic sector in which an enormous amount of economic and political power is assembled. It also stands in the way of a rapid societal transition towards a green and renewable energy system. The latter, we propose, is not only because oil and gas are strategic commodities from which astronomic rents can be derived, but also because of the power amassed within this industry and the way in which this power is both territorially and socially embedded. In this paper we will conceptualize this social embeddedness of the O&G industry by means of what we coin elite network embeddedness. We argue that in order to understand the way in which economic, political, and societal power is organized and employed in this strategic industry – both facilitating and hindering change (cf. the ‘stickiness’ of power in this industry, see Grote et al., 2024) – we need to take into account not only what is driving the O&G industry, but also who is driving this industry.

Research situated in economic geography (EG) provides a rich conceptual toolbox to analyze how firms behave, produce, and distribute goods and services across the globe through value chains, and how firms’ strategies impact regions (Dicken and Malmberg, 2001). An important concept advanced by this literature is the notion of territorial embeddedness. Territorial embeddednes considers the extent to which firms, and other actors, are anchored in particular places by means of the economic activities and dynamics that exist in those places. This embeddedness – mainly understood according to the intensity and densities of ties between firms, non-firm actors, and territorial assets – is seen to influence a firm’s access to political-economic resources and to shape firm strategy (Bridge and Bradshaw, 2017; Coe and Yeung, 2015; Dawley et al., 2019; Henderson et al., 2002). Territorial assets can be conceptualized as tangible and intangible resources from which lead firms can realize certain rents, because of the way that resource is embedded within specific territories (Bridge and Marriott, 2023).

In this paper, we focus on a particular type of intangible resource that tends to be overlooked in the EG literature but – we argue – can be utilized by lead firms to access political-economic resources and shape their strategy. Namely, the social capital accumulated through their corporate directors and the elite networks they are part of. Our study here ties into a longstanding body of research in economic sociology and international political economy, which has documented how such (corporate) elite networks are embedding individual firms into extensive national and transnational corporate networks. Crucially, these networks extend beyond the corporate board room into politics, policy planning, and civil society (e.g. Bühlmann et al., 2025; Carroll, 2010; de Graaff, 2011; Domhoff, 1967, 2009).

We demonstrate in this paper that such elite networks are transnational, but also have a distinctive territoriality that is mappable in ways that reveal distinctive geographical patterns in the extent of corporate power and influence. At the same time, we show how they form an additional layer on where and how firms are territorially and societally embedded. The latter, our study highlights, may be differently (geographically) configured than the embeddedness generated by analyses based on economic and institutional ties. Bringing these research traditions into conversation, we argue that elite network embeddedness adds an additional layer of embeddedness to lead firms and their global production networks (GPNs), that both reinforces their firm-territory relations but also extends beyond them.

For our analysis we will focus on a particular part of resource-rich territory, the UK North Sea Continental Shelf (hereafter UKCS), which in the past decade has been subject to significant transformations in terms of its firm-territory relations due to shifts in asset ownership and control (Bridge and Dodge, 2022). Previous literature on how the oil and gas sector is embedded in the UK and the way this embeddedness has shaped (geo)economic policy (e.g. Cumbers, 2012; Marriott and Macalister, 2021) has shown the deep connections between the O&G sector, UK (political) institutions, and society. These richly documented studies, however, lack a systematic analysis of the elite agency and social power structures that enable the O&G industry’s interests to be so well-represented and embedded in policymaking. Moreover, this literature largely focuses on firm-institution relations within the UK and thus misses how the sector is also connected to institutions in other countries, particularly as ownership of UKCS licenses extends beyond the UK. As our analysis will show, the architecture of elite network embeddedness of lead firms operating in the UKCS, while having an extensive UK footprint, is by no means geographically confined to the UK. Elite network embeddedness, in other words, is multi-territorial, extending across territories and transnationally embedding lead firms in institutions in multiple countries. Thus, our paper extends beyond a focus on embeddedness that narrowly examines firm-territory relations within the UK, and instead investigates where and how lead firms operating on the UKCS are territorially and societally embedded across multiple territories via elite social networks.

For our empirical analysis we have constructed a data base for which we have collected employment records and connections of directors, (non-)executives, and senior managers of the top oil and gas corporations operating in the UKCS between 2016 and 2020 from BoardEx, a global database which holds profiles of >1 million companies and business leaders. In this study, we focus on the directors’ corporate board positions, political affiliations, and policy planning affiliations (see below). We utilize social network analysis to analyze this data, which we complement with qualitative descriptive analysis (based on document analysis, semi-structured interview data, and secondary sources).

Mapping and analyzing the elite networks in which the lead firms operating in the UKCS are embedded – both nationally and transnationally – reveal the underlying architecture of corporate power and influence within the UK O&G industry, both within and outside the UK. This approach provides a different perspective on the agency and interests that shape both the transformation and the continuities of firm-territory ties in this crucial sector.

The paper is structured as follows. Below, we provide a conceptualization of elite network embeddedness integrating economic geography and economic sociology literatures, followed by a description of our methodology, data collection, and empirical analysis of the corporate networks, political affiliations, and policy-planning networks of the elites controlling lead firms operating in the UKCS. The concluding section reflects on our key findings and their implications for future research.

Conceptualizing elite network embeddedness

Since the mid-1990s, geographers, engaging with relational thinking, have explored the interconnections between economic activities and territories through the mutually constitutive relationships between firms and territories (Dicken and Malmberg, 2001). Relational approaches in economic geography have sought to better account for such firm-territory relations by studying how corporate organizational processes bind places together through their links and subsidiaries. Instead of viewing territories as bounded spaces, relational thinking approaches them as porous formations, resulting from network connections and relations (Coe et al., 2004; Dicken and Malmberg, 2001; MacKinnon, 2012). These relational approaches consider how organizational processes have become embedded in particular places, where embeddedness is considered not only in relation to transactional business activities, but also in regard to interdependencies that occur through social relations between firms located in specific territories. However, these conceptualizations often leave unspecified who or what is establishing these social relations. Generally, GPN scholars identify (lead) firms and institutions as the main actors establishing these social relations (Bridge and Le Billon, 2017; Coe and Yeung, 2015; Dawley et al., 2019). Yet, despite emphasizing social relations, these approaches tend not to look inside the structure of the firm, and so lack a notion of human agency underpinning and sustaining the behaviour of and relations between actors, that is, a conceptualization and operationalization of who drives and shapes the configuration of social political and economic forces that Watts (2004) claimed to be central to what he called the oil complex.

An influential scholar for the understanding of embeddedness within economic geography is Granovetter (1985), who argued that actors such as firms do not behave as isolated or atomized individuals based solely on market relations and outside of a social context; their actions, behaviour, and economic practices are embedded in systems of social relations and influenced by them (also Wood et al., 2019). Granovetter focused mostly on the micro-level of social ties and social capital, where embedding happens through the establishment of trusted interpersonal networks. The social ties of corporate elites, however, also extend beyond the firms’ boardrooms into other firms’ corporate boards, as well as into politics and other elite platforms (such as think tanks, business roundtables, and conferences).

In turning towards this fairly understudied aspect of corporate organization in economic geography, we propose the notion of elite network embeddedness. Here, we draw on what has been called ‘power structure research’ which originates from economic sociology (Domhoff, 1967; Mills, 1956), and started out analyzing the American power elite, documenting how a relatively small and closely knit corporate community – made up of the chief executives and directors of large (multinational) corporations – as well as those governing important think tanks, together with the owners of corporate wealth, form the central component of this ‘power elite’ (e.g. Domhoff, 1967; Schwartz, 1987). Others have linked these power structures to, for example, political and corporate lobbying (Burris, 1992, 2005; Useem, 1984) as well as foreign policy formation (de Graaff and van Apeldoorn, 2010; van Apeldoorn and de Graaff, 2016).

Power structure research has also been applied to examine how corporate directors are embedded in dense networks of corporate ownership and control through what are called interlocking directorates. ¹ This literature highlights the geographical nature of ties among elites and can reveal geographies of connection that are often not visible at the level of the firm. For example, while corporate elite networks are often most densely configured in the country of the firm’s headquarter, board directors also establish transnational ties, that is, extending across national borders and territories, embedding firms in transnational networks, and elite community structures (Carroll, 2010; Heemskerk and Takes, 2016; Kentor and Yang, 2005; Murray, 2017; Valeeva, 2022). As channels of information exchange, corporate board interlocks are theorized to reduce uncertainty for firms (Burt, 1983; Mizruchi, 1996), and lead to what is called mimetic isomorphism, that is, the tendency to imitate each other (e.g. Davis, 1991).

In addition, while corporate board interlocks thus provide connections between firms (i.e. firm-to-firm ties), they also connect people (i.e. people-to-people ties). Corporate elites meet and socialize at different corporate boards, business associations, think tanks, and other elite venues. As such, corporate board interlocks can serve as channels of communication among directors, facilitating trust, solidarity, consensus, or a common ‘worldview’ (van Apeldoorn and de Graaff, 2016), integrating corporate and class interests beyond the interests of individual competing firms (Burris, 2005; Carroll, 2010; Carroll and Sapinski, 2018, see also Dreiling et al., 2024). For our study, interlocking directorates thus offer an important indicator of elite corporate embeddedness and suggest that individual board members do not necessarily operate according to atomized self-interest or the individual firm interest only, but are socially and territorially embedded through a wider set of elite affiliations.

Indeed, beyond corporate board interlocks, elite power structures are also characterized by an extensive overlap between corporate power and politics; not infrequently in the form of a ‘revolving door’ of alternating positions between the private and the public sector (Burris, 2005; Murray, 2017; Wilks, 2013). Studies on American corporate elites have shown how such a revolving door between government and corporate positions has helped shape US foreign policy in line with the interests of transnationally oriented capital (van Apeldoorn and de Graaff, 2016). A recent study on Europe finds evidence that the recruitment of professionals with prior public sector experience enhances policy access in Europe (Belli and Stevens, 2024). Young et al. (2017, 2023) demonstrate how the configuration and properties of elite network ties between private industry and government affects regulation, advocacy behaviour, and policy making in the financial sector. A recent quantitative study on the revolving door reveals that more than half of BoardEx firms have at least one individual in a top position with prior government experience and finds that firms are more likely to receive procurement contracts following the appointment of a former regulator (Emery and Faccio, 2025). This literature highlights that such political ties can prove an important asset for firms.

In addition, corporate elites are often extensively linked to policy planning networks, through ties to non-profit organizations such as think tanks, research institutes, business associations, and transnational elite venues – like the World Economic Forum – where corporate directors, intellectuals, and policy makers convene to exchange knowledge and ideas on shared interests and challenges, which in turn feed into policies and corporate strategies (e.g. Burris, 1992; Carroll and Sapinski, 2010; Dreiling et al., 2024; van Apeldoorn, 2002). Elite think tanks, though formally independent non-profit organizations, are heavily corporate-funded, at least in the US (Burris, 1992; van Apeldoorn and de Graaff, 2016). Besides informing and influencing public policy and supplying personnel to both governments and the corporate world, they play a crucial role in shaping public opinion to align with corporate interests. With regard to the concrete outcomes and resources this provides lead energy firms with, Carroll et al. (2018) demonstrate how in Canada, policy planning networks form a rich organizational ecology of industry groups, think tanks, advocacy organizations, and research centres, promoting climate policies favourable to profitable corporate revenue streams (p. 447). Similar studies have been conducted in the US (Bonds, 2016) and in Japan regarding nuclear energy (Dreiling et al., 2024) as well as at the global level (Sapinski, 2019). While policy planning networks are most dense at the national level, these elite ties thus also cut across multiple territories (ibid.), highlighted by the literature on (the workings and configuration of) transnational policy planning networks (Carroll and Sapinski, 2010; Cronin, 2017).

Drawing on the concept of territorial embeddedness from the EG literature and building on research about elite power structures, we posit that lead firms are embedded both territorially and societally through their directors’ elite ties, which, as described above, extend beyond boardrooms into politics and civil society and – importantly – also extend across national boundaries. While the EG literature acknowledges the importance of territorial embeddedness, there remains a limited understanding of how and where firms operating on the UKCS are embedded – both within and across multiple territories. Our analysis of elite network embeddedness of lead UKCS firms proposes a novel approach to answering that question.

Elite network embeddedness, we propose, provides lead firms with intangible resources engendered by the social ties of the individuals in charge of leading the firms which can impact their bargaining power (e.g. in processes of ‘strategic coupling’, see Bridge and Dodge, 2022). These intangible resources can be seen as additional territorial assets, alongside oil and gas resources, from which lead firms can realize certain rents. As has been shown by the power structure research literature, the elite ties of board directors and senior management provide lead (O&G) firms with the ‘social capital’ that embeddedness in these networks generates, such as trust, solidarity, access, and consensus on shared values, interests, and worldviews (Bourdieu, 1986; Granovetter, 1985). This social capital could significantly add to the firms’ potential to influence and advance their interests and relative (bargaining) position, both vis-à-vis other companies, governments, and civil society. It may also provide firms with expertise, in the form of information exchange, that is, access to knowledge (Mizruchi, 2013), and with channels through which to shape knowledge production and influence public opinion (Burris, 1992; Carroll et al., 2018). As the existing literature we discussed above (Bonds, 2016; Carroll et al., 2018; Dreiling et al., 2024; Sapinski, 2019) has shown, these intangible resources (social capital) have been turned into tangible resources (economic capital or actual policy changes) favourable to O&G firms. Finally, we posit that state-industry networks through elite’s political affiliations can provide lead (O&G) firms with additional intangible resources (territorial assets) because they provide firms with expertise on and access to policy making. In studies on the power of the O&G industry, this state-industry nexus has been illustrated to inhibit climate regulation and governance in the interest of carbon-capital accumulation by feeding into the ‘climate denial’ campaigns (e.g. Brulle, 2014; Dreiling et al., 2024; Farrell, 2016) and shape industry-friendly narratives and policies (e.g. Bonds, 2016; Carroll et al., 2018).

Highlighting aspects of embeddedness not yet captured by traditional EG approaches, our approach allows us to analyze the degree and density of ties across multiple territories rather than single territories, and helps us to systematically map the social relations that underpin the oil complex (Watts, 2004, also Bridge and Marriott, 2023), offering a novel lens on the way in which UKCS lead companies’ firm-territory nexus is configured nationally and transnationally (cf. Seabrooke and Stausholm, 2024).

Mapping and analyzing the UKCS oil elite web

As our empirical starting point, we take the corporate boards of the top 20 lead O&G firms in the UKCS – that is, oil and gas firms with significant holdings of the North Sea acreage. We defined the top 20 lead O&G firms in the UKCS in terms of license ownership per year. ² Within our sample, 38% of the O&G firms are UK based, while 62% are headquartered outside of the UK (see for a breakdown, Supplemental Table 1). These O&G firms are mostly transnational corporations (TNCs), but as we are focusing on how – through their directors’ networks – they embed the UKCS oil sector, we refer to them as the UKCS O&G firms. Based on our selection of lead UKCS O&G firms for the period 2016–2020, our sample comprises all the directors of these top 20 firms in that period from BoardEx, which amounts to a total of 1525 individuals (see Supplemental Table 2). This includes board directors, chief executive officers, executive vice presidents, and senior management within each firm. Our sample contains 30% directors from UK O&G firms, 15% from French O&G firms, and 12% from US O&G firms; the rest of the O&G firm ‘nationality’ ranges between 6% and 2% of the total share of directors (see Supplemental Table 2). As a shorthand, we will refer to them as the UKCS oil elite.

BoardEx provides in-depth profiles of over 1 million companies and their board directors. It offers a comprehensive source for our study as it lists directors and executives, their roles with start and end dates, comprehensive biographies (including affiliations with government, military, clubs, charity, universities), and useful company information (including the (registered) country, industrial sector, etcetera). Because we are interested in the multiple ways in which the directors of the UKCS lead O&G firms are networked, we apply what has been called ‘elite prosopography’ (Lunding et al., 2020). This entails a biographical mapping of each director’s social and professional network. When put together, these biographical networks result in group patterns, conceptualized as (multi-layered) elite power structures (de Graaff, 2011, 2012).

In this study, we focus on three different types of elite affiliations, informed by the literature discussed in the previous section: corporate ties (interlocking directorates), governmental affiliations, and policy planning affiliations (membership of e.g. think tanks, business associations, clubs, and other corporate elite platforms; see for an overview of the different director ties per lead firm Supplemental Table 2). To analyze interlocking directorates – that is, directors holding multiple board memberships simultaneously – we used data from BoardEx, matching start and end dates. For governmental and policy-planning affiliations we adapted BoardEx categories to align with our conceptual design. For the political affiliations we used the BoardEx predefined categories ‘government’ and ‘military’; for the policy planning affiliations we combined several of BoardEx categories (such as ‘clubs’, ‘charities’, and ‘private’) befitting our operationalization of policy planning affiliations. It should be noted that since the affiliations to politics and policy planning are based on longitudinal career data, shared memberships in these cases are not necessarily interlocks but may well have been consecutive affiliations(s). While this choice is based on the way data is structured in BoardEx, it also allows us to capture the complete career of our directors, including potential revolving door patterns. We use the country in which the connected organizations are headquartered as an indicator of nationality, enabling us to analyze the territorial embedding of these networks. ³

To analyze and visualize the network data, we deploy social network analysis (SNA; Scott and Carrington, 2011; Young et al., 2017, 2023). SNA can help to uncover channels and pathways of elite formation and networking (e.g. central meeting places, interlocks) and visualize patterns of social and territorial embeddedness that otherwise remain invisible. However, a qualitative interpretation is still necessary to give meaning to these visualized patterns (Mizruchi, 1996). We will therefore complement the network analysis with a descriptive analysis of additional qualitative data from interviews with industry representatives, corporate reports, news reporting, organizational websites, and mission statements, published biographies and secondary sources. A total of 20 in-depth semi-structure interviews were conducted with corporate elites occupying top management positions in offshore O&G companies from September 2020 to July 2021 (Teixeira and Bridge, 2024). Interviews were mostly conducted online via Zoom or Teams and analyzed using NVivo. Interviewees were anonymized, and interviews were conducted in conformity with UK research ethics approval (GEOG-2020-05-22T14).

The UKCS oil elite web

Figure 1 introduces a schematic visualization of the UKCS oil elite web for the period 2016–2020. The different categories of elite ties are clustered into corporate interlocks (with geographical breakdown), governmental affiliations (geographical breakdown), and policy planning (geographical breakdown), and shows the total numbers of such ties for each category. We also list the top 5 relatively most frequently connected countries for these three categories of ties.

Figure 1.

The UKCS oil elite web.

Overall, Figure 1 illustrates that opening up the black box of the firm by focusing on the social relations established by the actors steering the firms indeed generates an additional social structure through which lead O&G firms are embedded. Not only societally – cutting across firm-to-firm relations and extra-firm relations – but also territorially. The figure reveals the vast number interpersonal elite ties (5993 in total) of the directors embedding the lead O&G firms in our sample in the wider corporate world (with a total of 1333 corporate interlocks). In addition, we find the social networks of the O&G lead firm directors to extend significantly into government and politics (934 affiliations) and policy planning (3726 affiliations). ⁴

Figure 1 also indicates the configuration of territorial embeddedness of the UKCS lead O&G firms through elite ties. That this territorial embeddedness is transnational in scope – that is, extending across national borders and across the private and public domain – was to be expected, because the oil industry is a highly transnational industry and our sample consists of mostly Transnational Corporations (TNCs) of which the majority (62%) are headquartered outside of the UK. Yet, to find the UKCS oil elite to be politically more extensively networked with the US (21% of total corporate interlock ties) and France (20%) than with the UK itself (17%) is nonetheless interesting. In terms of policy planning, the UKCS oil elite web is even more extensively linked to the US, with more than double the number of affiliations compared to the UK (1572–664).

The extensive ties to the US political system of the UKCS oil elite web are particularly interesting in contrast with firm level analyses conducted previously by Bridge and Dodge (2022) based on historical license ownership data on the UKCS, which highlight the decreasing presence of American oil majors from the UKCS. Indeed, directors from US O&G firms make up 12% of our total sample, which is less than half of directors from UK-based O&G firms (30%) and also less than the French O&G firms’ directors, which constitute 15% of the total (for a complete overview, see Supplemental Table 2). These findings indicate that in terms of elite network embeddedness, America’s dominant presence in the UKCS persists despite license-ownership shifts over the past decade, where US oil companies ownership of UKCS acreage has decreased by 85% since 1995–2020 (ibid.).

We will explore these links in more detail later, for now we observe that UKCS O&G firms through their directors are embedded in extensive elite networks that reach far beyond their corporate boards. These elite communities are both situated nationally (in that there is a clear density of ties in specific countries) but, as we will show below, are also linked transnationally through boards with members who have links in multiple countries. We have proposed that these ties provide UKCS lead O&G firms with intangible resources such as social capital, expertise, and access (i.e. additional territorial assets) which they can harness in pursuit of corporate strategy. In the following we will zoom in to provide more granular analysis of these networked elite power structures, starting with the corporate connections.

The UKCS oil elite’s corporate interlocks – Geographical and sectoral configurations

Illustrating the geographical and sectoral configuration of UKCS oil elite’s corporate ties, we here zoom in on the corporate interlocks established by the directors of our selected lead O&G firms. Figure 2 provides the distribution of these board interlocks by country (left) and sector (right). To assess the way in which the UKCS oil sector is geographically embedded in wider global and transnational networks (cf. Carroll, 2010; de Graaff, 2011, 2012; Valeeva, 2022), we compare the number of all corporate interlocks (blue bars), that is, both national and transnational interlocks, with the number of transnational interlocks (orange bars).

Figure 2.

Corporate interlocks among lead UKCS firm directors.

Figure 2 (left) shows that in our sample of O&G UKCS firms corporate interlocks with American firms occur most frequently – exceeding those with UK firms. This relative dominance becomes even more evident when selecting only the transnational interlocks. Transnational interlocks occur when a firm’s director simultaneously serves on the board of a company headquartered in another country. Accordingly, we excluded all interlocks within the home country of each lead O&G firm (e.g. all US–US interlocks for US firms). Figure 2 thus reveals that most US corporate interlocks in our sample are transnational. Since in this case the transnational interlocks are created by directors of non-US lead O&G firms, this demonstrates that the elite networks of non-US firms operating on the UKCS are deeply embedded in the US corporate sphere, indicating the centrality of the US corporate sphere in transnational elite networks.

By contrast, only a smaller share of UK interlocks are transnational, implying that the majority of UK interlocks are national ties established by UK lead O&G firms. In France, almost all interlocks are national, formed by directors of French lead O&G firms. A more disaggregate analysis at the level of our UKCS lead firms’ HQ location confirms this (see Supplemental Figure 1). In most of our cases the majority of corporate interlocks correspond with the nationality of the O&G lead firm HQ: findings that align with patterns found in the literature on transnational corporate elite networks, which show that although transnational ties form an important backbone of elite communities (e.g. Valeeva, 2022), national interlocks remain more common and denser than transnational ones (e.g. Heemskerk and Takes, 2016; Kentor and Jang, 2005; Staples, 2006). The US corporate interlocks seem to be an exception here and at least underscore a continuous dominant presence of Anglo-American corporate elite power structures in the UKCS, which – as mentioned earlier – is in stark contrast with the documented diversification in ownership of license equity on the UKCS O&G sector of the past decades and the decreasing presence of US oil majors as documented by Bridge and Dodge (2022).

The sectoral breakdown of corporate interlocking ties among our selected lead O&G firms (Figure 2, right) highlights their connections to other industries, indicating the extent and type of expertise these firms can draw on – an additional territorial asset as previously conceptualized. Moreover, if elite interlocks indeed help foster consensus, trust, and solidarity across corporate boards, it becomes especially relevant to examine the sectors with which the oil elites are most frequently interlocked. Overall, the sectoral patterns we observe display considerable diversity, suggesting that lead O&G firms draw expertise from – and maintain access to – a wide range of sectors. One particularly notable finding is that although the O&G sector is, unsurprisingly, the most well-connected, interlocking directorates of the UKCS oil elite with finance and banking are nearly as extensive. This mirrors earlier power structure research identifying the financial sector’s dominance in the economy (e.g. Fennema, 1982) and aligns with recent work on the (stickiness of) power of the financial industry in oil GPNs (Grote et al., 2024).

This pronounced oil-finance nexus in the corporate interlock network suggests that directors with financial expertise, social capital, and industry access are highly valuable to O&G firms (and vice versa). Such ties may also enhance O&G firms’ access to funding. As one interviewee explained, reflecting on frequent discussions of their firm with banks about oil price scenarios: ‘Obviously, having come from that world, I had a lot of contacts in all the banks, and we ended up with three scenarios based on different economic recoveries from COVID’. (Interview #1, 06/08/2021). Another interviewee highlighted the direct role of personal connections in securing early-stage investment:

Our initial funding came through a connection I had to an American guy who was working for a big American company, but he wasn’t working on the exploration side when - he we met working on oil trading. And we got that company to put in ten million dollars of equity into our company on the basis that they would buy the oil that we produced [. . .]. (Interview #2, 29/09/2020)

These examples from our interviewees illustrate how corporate networks and interlocks (social capital) facilitate access to financial expertise (intangible asset) and funding (i.e. tangible outcomes). Another telling example of how access to a board member with specialized (fracking) expertise and credibility was converted into concrete asset acquisition was recounted by one of our interviewees as follows:

[a decision on the acquisition of a UKCS gasfield] was due to go to the Board and we knew that the Chairman was against it. But one of the board members who was a Canadian frack expert, I got to him in the morning and we went through it [. . ..], he said ‘we do this every day. This is a slam dunk’. And without that guy’s help at the board, it would never have been acquired. It became the one asset that actually worked for [anonymized], it’s now owned by [anonymized], and produced phenomenally well. (Interview #2, 29/09/2020)

Again, the quote illustrates how the board member’s expertise and support (social capital) changed internal decision-making and enabled an UKCS O&G firm to acquire a UKCS gasfield, which subsequently produced ‘phenomenally’ (tangible economic outcome). We now turn from the corporate embeddedness of lead UKCS O&G firms to their political embeddedness.

Political embedding of UKCS lead oil firms: A territorial asset?

As already shown in Figure 1, the lead O&G firms in our sample are extensively linked to politics and government through their directors’ political ties. These political ties range from the highest level of politics and (foreign) policy making (e.g. ministries, treasuries, parliament, diplomacy, and intelligence) to also cover a wide range of medium and lower level political affiliations (e.g. governmental commissions, advisory boards, and task forces). Unlike corporate board interlocks, elite ties to politics and government most often do not directly overlap with their corporate board positions but tend to alternate; and not infrequently constitute a revolving door pattern with elites moving in and out of politics and the corporate world (e.g. Burris, 2005; Murray, 2017; Wilks, 2013, see conceptual section). To explore such patterns, we employ historical data covering the whole career of the directors in our sample. Below we assess the extent and nature of this form of elite network embeddedness of UKCS lead O&G firms, which we have suggested to provide them with intangible resources such as social capital, expertise, and state access.

Figure 3 provides the geographical distribution of all political ties of the corporate directors of our top 20 lead O&G firms. As with the corporate interlocks, it shows both the total number political affiliations (y-axis) within a certain country (blue bars), and the total number of transnational political affiliations (orange bars), that is, ties that directors establish with political institutions outside of their respective lead O&G firm’s home country.

Figure 3.

Political connections of UKCS oil elites (geographical distribution).

The UKCS oil elites in our sample clearly have extensive state connections, in particular with(in) the US, France, and the UK. An interesting finding from this figure – which was also evident from Figure 1 – is that the ties to American politics by the lead firms in the North Sea oil industry outnumber those to the UK government, or any other state in our sample for that matter. The contrast is, as noted before, especially noteworthy given both the declining presence of U.S. firms on the UKCS (Bridge and Dodge, 2022), and the composition of our sample, which includes substantially more directors from UK lead firms (30%) than from their U.S. counterparts (12%).

The transnational ties – that is, those across national borders – here tell an interesting story. This category excludes ties between O&G lead firms and their ‘own’ national state. The transnational political ties to the US, for example, are thus established by directors from non-US O&G firms. Figure 3 shows that about two fifths of ties to US political institutions are transnational. In other words, the extensive state-business ties of the UKCS O&G lead firms to US politics are established not only by directors at US O&G firms, but also by directors at non-US O&G boards. ⁵ This finding attests to the exceptional transnational reach and elite network embeddedness of the UKCS oil industry within the US government and politics (and vice versa), a form of embeddedness that hence does not solely depend on the actual presence of US O&G firms. It shows how American presence in the global oil industry – of which the UKCS is an important part – is in part substantiated by transnational state-business ties that appear resilient to shifts in the industry, such as license ownership structure (cf. ibid.). Ties to French politics are also frequent amongst the UKCS oil elite, yet they are predominantly established by the directors at the French O&G lead firms (which make up a sizeable share of the total directors, 15%). At the third place follow the ties to UK politics, of which a considerable share are also transnational, that is, established by directors of lead O&G firms headquartered outside of the UK.

To provide more granular insight into how these ties are configured and employed at the national level, we zoom in on the UK. Figure 4 shows a two-mode network of the lead firms’ connections to the UK government and politics through directors’ affiliations. This network only contains governmental and political nodes that have at least two firms connected to them (the actual number of individual firm-state connections is thus much higher). The table beneath the figure lists the top 10 most connected (>4) UK governmental departments providing the total number of affiliations.

Figure 4.

Connections between O&G lead firms and UK politics and government.

Clearly, the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), which according to its own mission statement ‘works to protect and promote the UK’s security, prosperity, and influence around the world’ (FCDO, governmental website, 2025), is the most extensively connected department to the UKCS oil elite web (38 affiliations in total). This is followed by the Cabinet Office (10) and the Treasury (10), the Bank of England (9), and the British Army (6), indicating the UKCS oil elites in our sample have (had) ties to the highest decision-making bodies in politics and finance in the UK government. Another interesting central node here is the Takeover Panel, the UK’s regulatory body overseeing the equal treatment of shareholders in takeover bids, a domain that seems particularly proximate to industry interests. We have suggested that these state-business ties may harbour social capital for oil companies and governments alike. The latter can get advice and knowledge (i.e. expertise as a territorial asset) from industry, the former can get access and influence to political decision-making (i.e. state access as a territorial asset). Figure 4 indicates that in our sample BP, Shell, Centrica, BG, and ENGIE are particularly well-placed in terms of such territorial assets.

To illustrate this in more detail, Figure 5 zooms in on the individual directors that are establishing these political connections, revealing Sir Roberts Sawers (BP), Sir David Manning (BG), Nick Baird (Centrica), Sir Nigel Sheinwald (Shell), Lord Simon (Engie, former BP), as well as Baroness Hogg (BG) as particularly big ‘state-industry’ linkers. ⁶

Figure 5.

Connections UKCS lead firm directors and UK politics and government (2016–2020).

Space prevents an extensive in-depth analysis, but based on the biographical profiles of these big linkers we could identify a few emblematic patterns in how their career paths bridge politics and the O&G industry.

One such path involves transitioning from a high-level political career, often in diplomatic service, to the corporate world. Sir Roberts Sawers (BP) is a good example of this pattern. His biographical profile indicates he spent 36 years in public service, including as the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, from 2009 to 2014, just before his appointment as independent non-executive director at BP in 2015. Illustrating how his state access and expertise provide the company with a crucial territorial asset, the BP website notes: ‘Sir John’s deep experience of international political and commercial matters is an asset to the board in navigating the geopolitical issues faces by a modern global company’ (BP, Who we Are, 2023). Sir David Manning (BG) similarly brought significant state expertise and access to the BG Group as an independent non-executive director (2008–2016) after 35 years at the FCDO. Notably, he was Prime Minister Blair’s top Foreign Policy Adviser (2001–2003) and later British Ambassador to the USA (2003–2007), both during the ‘War on Terror’. While at BG, he also joined the boards of US defense firm Lockheed Martin and British strategic consultancy Hakluyt & Company, founded and staffed by former SIS MI6 officers.

Another characteristic career path we identified involves first building a strong corporate career, followed by a government appointment, and then returning to the business world. Lord Simon exemplifies this path, having built a distinguished career at BP – including as CEO (1992–1995) and Chairman (1995–1997) – before transitioning into politics as Minister for Trade and Competitiveness for Europe (1997–1999) and longtime member of the House of Lords (UK Parliament’s upper house). Illustrating the classic ‘revolving door’ pattern often associated with corporate elites, Lord Simon, after his term in government, returned to the corporate world, joining Unilever’s board (2000–2009), and holding non-executive directorships at, for example, Engie (then GDF Suez), Morgan Stanley, and Dana Gas.

A variation on this pattern, observable from our data, is offered by Baroness (Sarah) Hogg (BG) who built a more integrated career bridging politics, media, and businesses. She moved from journalism into politics, becoming part of the John Major government and joining the UK House of Lords in 1995. After her time in government, she moved to the corporate world, holding diverse board memberships (e.g. BG, P&O Cruises), while also holding board memberships and regulatory functions at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Financial Reporting Council (FRC), and the earlier mentioned Takeover Panel. As the biographical examples illustrate, the embeddedness of O&G lead firms through their directors’ (previous or revolving) ties to politics gives them access to – and expertise from – the highest level of policy making.

From our interview data it also transpired that industry participants have close connections with UK institutions such as the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA), the Department for Business Energy and Investment (BEIS), the Treasury, and the UK Oil and Gas Industry Association (OGUK). ⁷ Interviewees moreover confirmed the importance of such relationships for firms to convey their interests to government regarding issues around tax, license awards, and net-zero transition. Aside having corporate affairs team’s tasked with mapping the right stakeholders, coordinating initiatives, nurturing relationships, and lobbying, the personal interlocking or revolving door ties were mentioned as particularly relevant. As one interviewee explained: ‘It’s probably not dissimilar to the university network, where you sit on different committees, different boards, different focus groups and so on. In [company’s name anonymized] we have cultivated our relationship with the OGA on different levels. For example, our CEO [anonymized], has a good relationship with [anonymized], who is the Chief executive of the OGA’ (Interview #3, 11/06/2021). Illustrating how the social capital created by such multi-level business-state elite networks lead to tangible favourable outcomes for the O&G lead firms in terms of licensing, the interviewee continued:

I would say traditionally licensing rounds is the standard way of getting acreage out to companies, but they also have a process which we refer to as the out-of-round process. If at any time, for example, [. . .] we had a really smart idea on a block, there wasn’t a licensing round in place at the moment. We could actually approach the OGA to actually ask them if they could actually make this block available for application. We’d obviously have to support our case with various technical conditions and financial criteria, but they have done that on occasions as well actually. (Interview #3, 11/06/2021)

The importance of transnational ties and access to politics and decision-making bodies abroad was also highlighted by our interviewees. While in the home country there are many established channels for business interest representation and networking, interviewees expressed the need for local connections abroad through personal relations, since according to one interviewee (interview #4, 28/09/2021): ‘it’s more difficult internationally, and it tends to be through personal relationships that you try and build on [. . .] that, through networking and attending conferences, and getting to know people’.

This brings us to the third dimension of elite network embeddedness of UKCS lead O&G firms: policy planning networks, that is, board directors’ membership and affiliation with industry and business associations, lobby platforms, think tanks, and research institutes. We have suggested that this type of elite network embeddedness, like corporate interlocks and political affiliations, may provide lead UKCS firms with additional territorial assets with which they can advance their interests, in the form of social capital, institutional access, and expertise. Power structure studies of the O&G industry have indeed demonstrated how the industry’s embeddedness in such policy planning networks enables ‘carbon capital’ to effectively advance fossil fuel interests. This includes delaying or reshaping climate policies, engaging in tax evasion and regulatory capture, while legitimizing these interests as aligned with broader economic and state goals. Additionally, it aids in shaping public opinion through knowledge production, public relations campaigns, advertising, and media presence (Brulle, 2014; Carroll et al., 2018; Dreiling and Darves, 2016; Sapinski, 2019). Below we will show how and where the UKCS firms in our sample are embedded in such national and transnational policy planning networks.

Policy planning networks of the UKCS oil elite

As was already shown in Figure 1, policy planning ties are the most numerous and are heavily concentrated in the US (42% of all ties) and the UK (18%). ⁸ Although space limits prevent a thorough examination of all these ties, Table 1 lists the top 10 most extensively connected policy planning organizations related to our sample of UKCS O&G lead firms.

Table 1.

Top policy-planning institutions connected to UKCS oil elite by number of affiliations.

Rank	Institution (policy planning)	Director ties	HQ country
1	World Economic Forum	30	Switzerland
2	UK Oil and Gas Industry Association (OGUK)	29	UK
3	Business Roundtable	25	US
4	The Business Council	24	US
5	American Petroleum Institute	20	US
6	European Round Table of Industrialists	18	Belgium
7	National Association of Manufacturers	16	US
8	World Energy Council	16	UK
9	National Petroleum Council	15	US
10	Council on Foreign Relations	14	US

Source: Compiled by authors from BoardEx 2021.

This top 10 includes, first of all, a selection of the prime meeting places of the transnational corporate and policy elite, such as World Economic Forum (WEF) (#1) and European Roundtable of Industrialists (#6) which the literature has shown to be key venues to create intra-elite consensus on transnational governance and policy planning (see Parmar, 2019; van Apeldoorn, 2002), as well as the World Energy Council (WEC) (#8), which calls itself: ‘the world’s leading member-based global energy network and the only truly international and impartial energy organisation [. . .] working dynamically across the whole energy ecosystem, from governments to private and state corporations, academia and civil society’, (WEC, 2026 corporate website).

Secondly, we find in the ranking some of the most powerful American business lobby organizations connected to our UKCS oil elites. For instance, the Business Council (BC) (#4), a private ‘invitation only’ organization of business leaders with frequent high-level interaction with Washington policy makers (BC, 2026, corporate website), and the Business Roundtable (BR), (#3), an association of CEO’s from lead US firms which for decades has been central to the US policy advocacy network (Cronin, 2017; Murray, 2017). While being ‘the voice of business in Washington’, Staples (2012: 102) shows evidence of the BR being highly transnational in the composition of its associated directors and ‘integral to the global corporate network’ (Staples, 2012: 110).

A third category we identify are O&G industry’s premier lobby groups, such as the American Petroleum Institute (#5), which has been instrumental in shaping and funding climate denial campaigns (Dunlap and McCright, 2010) and in tailoring climate policies to the industry’s ‘business as usual’ interests (Urry, 2015). We also find the National Petroleum Council (NPC) (#9) in this category, a policy planning organization par excellence (Pratt et al., 2002), with as its main purpose to ‘advise, inform, and make recommendations to the Secretary of Energy and the entire Executive Branch with respect to any matter relating to oil and natural gas’ (NPC, 2026, corporate website).

For the UK, it is OGUK (#2) (presently: Offshore Energy UK, OEUK) that stands out as the second most frequently connected to our UKCS oil elite. Indeed, presenting itself as: ‘the representative body that champions the whole sector, the definitive source of information about the UK upstream, and the gateway to industry networks and expertise’ (OEUK, 2023, corporate website). The importance of being on institutions’ boards, such as the OGUK, in order to have access to the UK government, was also confirmed in our interviews with industry representatives. One interviewee (interview #5, 04/08/2021) said: ‘Representation on a number of things, so like [anonymized] he sits and supports the OGA on the supply chain. Myself, I was on the board for the OCA – Offshore Contractors Association – and then working with OGUK. Through these relationships, it has enabled us to have conversations directly with the ministers’. Another participant illustrated the workings of these affiliations as follows (interview #4, 28/09/2021):

We have a country chair who is linked through the formal channels to the prime minister and Downing Street, et cetera and the policymakers from an upstream basis, the SVP [senior vice-president] who heads the business, [anonymized] is plugged into the OGUK and OGA and all the regulators. [. . .] Each of these is an interface and as we face either opportunities for improvement, challenges, et cetera, we take it to the right level. It either bubbles up or cascades down as the discussions happen.

All in all, our mapping and analysis of the policy planning ties of the UKCS oil elite indicate that it is well embedded through connections with wider business-class interests through transnational elite platforms such as the WEF and powerful business associations in the US (e.g. Business Roundtable), Europe (for instance the ERT), and the UK (e.g. the WEC) – as well as specific O&G industry association and lobby groups (such as OGUK, presently OEUK, and the American Petroleum Institute). The descriptive analysis we provided on some of the most frequently connected policy-planning organizations, moreover, confirms what is already established in the literature on such elite affiliations (Carroll et al., 2018; Dreiling et al., 2024; Dunlap and McCright, 2010; Sapinski, 2019): not only do they define themselves as meeting places for corporate directors and other elites to exchange interests and ideas, they also function as channels for the advancement and legitimization of the industries’ interests into policy making and wider society. The latter is also illustrated by some of our interviewees as highlighted above. As one of them aptly put it (Interview #1, 06/08/2021): ‘Politics is still absolutely key in the oil and gas industry. If you don’t have an antenna for where the government is going, it’s very difficult to make good investment decisions. [. . .] It’s really about networking, your internal network’.

Conclusion

In this paper we have set out to map and analyze how leading oil and gas (O&G) firms in the UK North Sea (UKCS) are embedded in national and transnational elite networks through elite ties of their corporate boards. O&G firms are central actors in the energy sector, which is not only pivotal to economic growth and production but also in need of a drastic transition away from fossil fuel, arguably against the O&G firms’ interests. We have produced a different account of corporate power in the UKCS by focusing not on firms or institutions as such, but on the social networks of those who shape and direct strategy for lead firms on the UKCS. Thus, offering a novel perspective on firm-territory relations and firm embeddedness, we have argued that the directors of lead O&G firms through their social elite networks in turn embed the companies into wider corporate networks, politics, and policy planning through extensive webs of elite ties. These networked and partly overlapping elite ties, we suggest, offer lead O&G firms additional intangible resources – territorial assets – beyond the institutional and contractual ties commonly considered in the GPN and economic geography literature, in the form of social capital (e.g. trust, access, expertise). In addition, our approach provides a different lens on the spatial embedding of the firm-territory relations and the transnational embedding of the UKCS lead firms (Seabrooke and Stausholm 2024).

We found the corporate network in which the UKCS lead O&G firms are embedded through their directors’ corporate interlocks to be very extensive, stretching into a wide set of economic sectors but with a particularly strong overlap with the finance sector. The strong integration of the oil elite with the finance sector suggests that having directors on the board with financial expertise, social capital, and access is appealing for O&G companies (and vice versa). Our interview data illustrated how this arrangement enhanced O&G firms’ access to funding. Further exploration of these oil-finance ties, the driving mechanisms and their implications would in our view thus constitute a promising field of future research as these two sectors are pivotal to capitalist production and power. Another finding that stood out from the analysis of embeddedness through interlocking directorates was the dominance of US interlocks, which by far outnumbered even those within and to the UK. This points towards the continued predominance of Anglo-American corporate elite power structures manifest in the UKCS O&G sector, in spite of the decline of US oil majors invested in the North Sea.

Consistent with findings and propositions in power structure research, our analysis shows the UKCS oil elite to be extensively embedded in political and policy planning networks. We found the political embeddedness of UKCS lead firms to be geographically strongly correlated with the nationality of the firms HQ. An important exception here was however, again, the US, as a significant number of political ties to the US were established by non-US oil board directors. This indicates the importance of being networked with the US for non-US O&G firms, not only economically but also politically. The importance to establish state-business and policy planning ties locally, at the place of resource extraction, is to be expected – and was confirmed by our data. But what our analysis highlights in addition is the transnational dimension of the UKCS O&G industry and the UKCS oil elite, and how its geographic configuration is still strongly gravitating towards the US – again, despite the shifts in ownership and actual presence of US O&G firms at the geographical place of resource extraction.

Our findings suggest that for a globally operating oil elite, access to US politics and policy planning is a useful (intangible) asset in this very globalized industry, which is moreover an economically and militarily crucial sector in the global political economy. In addition, this interest and influence may also be directed the other way: that is, the US government having an interest in ties to this crucial industry, in which the UKCS still constitutes an important part. While based on our data we cannot conclusively assess these propositions or the mechanisms of corporate elite influence, the key finding here is that moving beyond a firm or institutions based approach reveals a different layer of power, embeddedness, and firm-territory relations and uncovers a much more resilient and durable domain of US power in the O&G industry that seems to withstand shifts in license ownership and resource extraction (of – in this case – the UKCS). Based on biographical and interview data, we illustrated how such state-industry relations provide O&G lead firms with intangible resources, social capital (such as access), expertise, and state exposure, highlighting some of the ways in which these elite state-business ties are employed within the UK as additional territorial assets to influence policy and decision-making and (corporate) governance.

In our systematic mapping of the UKCS oil elites’ policy planning ties, we found strong connections with broader business interests via transnational elite platforms such as the WEF, and powerful business associations like the Business Roundtable (US), ERT (Europe), and WEC (UK). These connections also extend to specific O&G industry groups and influential think tanks, in the US and the UK in particular. Existing literature has shown such policy planning platforms to be central spaces for the creation of intra-elite consensus, and to offer the energy sector (oil, gas, nuclear) crucial channels for the advancement and legitimization of the industries’ interests into policy making and wider society (Carroll et al., 2018; Dreiling et al., 2024).

Our descriptive qualitative analysis and interview data supports the idea that these elite networks serve not only as venues for corporate directors and other elites to share interests and ideas, but also as channels for advancing and legitimizing industry interests in policymaking and society. We offered several examples of how interviewees described the use of such elite ties (i.e. intangible assets) and the tangible outcomes for O&G firms in terms of, for example, making good investment decisions, obtaining out-of-round licenses, acquiring profitable assets, and securing early stage investments. These examples, while telling, require more systematic in-depth research into how firms, governments, and individual elites employ these ties and needs to be investigated by future research. The latter, however, can first be done when the patterns and configurations of such state-industry ties have been systematically identified and mapped, which is the present study’s original contribution. As such, our research has uncovered the structures of elite network embeddedness of the UKCS oil and gas sector, its geographical configuration, and its reach through interconnections with other sectors, politics, and civil society. It thereby offers a methodological and conceptual innovation to the economic geography literature and adds a sectoral and more geographical focus to power structure research. This approach may also offer a framework for future research on the O&G industry in other regions, as well as comparison between regions and sectors.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-epn-10.1177_0308518X251414422 – Supplemental material for Mapping the oil elite web: Elite network embeddedness and firm-territory relations of the UK oil industry

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-epn-10.1177_0308518X251414422 for Mapping the oil elite web: Elite network embeddedness and firm-territory relations of the UK oil industry by Nana de Graaff, Alexander Dodge, Tiago Teixeira and Thomas Janssen in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space