Community engagement, legitimacy, and justice in the oil and gas sector

: insights from a Galp case study

Abstract

This dissertation examines how different community engagement models in the oil and gas sector shape local perceptions of legitimacy and justice, through a case study of Galp in Portugal. Drawing on Stakeholder Theory, Legitimacy Theory and the Energy Justice framework (distributional, procedural and recognition justice), it asks how engagement design governance arrangements, participation opportunities and communication transparency affects the social licence to operate in territories where industrial facilities coexist with residential communities and municipal mediation is frequent. The research follows a qualitative case-study strategy. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with four stakeholder groups (company/foundation representatives, employees, community residents and institutional partners) and triangulated with documentary evidence, including sustainability reports and public materials from 2020–2024. Data were analysed using Gioia-inspired coding and Yin’s pattern-matching logic. Findings suggest that philanthropic/transactional approaches and responsive (consultative) models marked by centralised decision-making and limited capacity for stakeholders to shape priorities tend to generate mainly pragmatic and conditional legitimacy and expose procedural justice gaps (opaque selection criteria, weak feedback loops and a low sense of shared decision-making). By contrast, more strategic and co-creative practices grounded in sustained interaction, learning and iterative adaptation are associated with higher trust, stronger recognition and fairer assessments of engagement, although power asymmetries and uneven visibility of outcomes persist across groups. The study contributes by integrating engagement, legitimacy and justice into a single analytical lens and by deriving practical implications for more transparent, responsive engagement aligned with rising European expectations for reporting and meaningful participation.

Date of Award	27 Jan 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Carlos Miguel Pelicano Borges Teixeira de Azevedo (Supervisor)