What role will Europe’s energy majors play in the EU’s search for energy security and for more responsible and environmentally sustainable energy consumption? Although soaring oil and gas prices swell the balance sheets ofthe major international energy companies, their role in Western societies is in constant flux; what should EU’s policymakers be seeking from these companies that lead the corporate wealth charts yet control only a small and shrinking share of the world’s natural energy resources?

How should these energy majors be adapting to such diverse pressures as “political” acquisitions of their shares by sovereign wealth funds and at the other end of the scale, demands in Asia, Africa and the Middle East that they should invest in the educational and infrastructural development of countries whose resources they exploit? How adequate are the mechanisms for dialogue that international energy corporations have at their disposal?