Sustainability Analysis of Petronas

PETRONAS is a fully-integrated oil and gas multinational corporation fully owned by the Malaysian Government. The nature of its business itself is causing sustainability issues because while oil is a key resource to generate power, it is also a great environment polluter and is not renewable natural resource. Although there are various stakeholders for PETRONAS, the Malaysian government and local governments where PETRONAS operates have the greatest impact on its strategies and actions. Whenever there is a conflict between governments and local community/environment, the viewpoints and expectation of the governments seem to be given priority, much to the detriment of the local community and environment. PETRONAS’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities such as in education and biofuel research are great but certainly not enough and sustainable. PETRONAS must take ownership of its direction to be a sustaining corporation. There are 4 main recommendations outlined for PETRONAS to help it be a “sustaining corporation”. First, PETRONAS must take environment stewardship by taking a three-pronged approach of “finding out where and how it damages the environment”, “mitigate and reduce the damage” and “reverse the damage”. Second, it must begin to sincerely respect human rights especially in places it has its operations. Third, it should work to find renewable and sustainable energy sources and technology; and economical way to them to consumers. Fourth, it should leverage its partnership with its education institutes to research, share and promote renewable energy technology and management processes. The key driver to all this change will be to place the Environment to where it really belongs – as a definite stakeholder in the Stakeholder Salience model of PETRONAS.

1 Introduction
PETRONAS (Petroliam Nasional Berhad) which is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is a fully-integrated oil and gas corporation and is ranked among FORTUNE Global 500's largest