Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates how the relation between state and company is enacted through infrastructure and negotiated by local politicians, after the formerly state-owned company Equinor/Statoil moved into a new region in its home country Norway.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates how the relation between state and company is enacted through infrastructure when a formerly state-owned company moves into a new and formerly peripheral region of its home country. The Snøhvit field operated by Equinor (formerly Statoil) was approved by the Norwegian government in 2002. It marked the opening of the Barents Sea in the Norwegian Arctic, with correspondingly high expectations - and fears - from the local population, which consists of both Norwegians and the indigenous Sámi.

The construction and operation of the field took place after Equinor's privatisation, at a time when the state was simultaneously enabling development and withdrawing some of its former involvement in governance. Though the state still owns the majority of the shares, and the company is largely seen as a state company by the population, Equinor's role as a national policy-shaper and regional influencer has changed in the last decade and a half.

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores how the local level has understood and negotiated their future between the state and the company. Noting how municipal politicians make demands variously to the government and to the company and attribute them overlapping, but differentiated responsibility, it asks which futures are enabled and restricted through physical infrastructure, impact assessments, and enactments of responsibility in public performance.