Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explicate how petroleum continues to be seen as a resource of the future, in the interplay between global policies and predictions, national and company priorities and prospecting, and local expectations in parts of the Norwegian Arctic.

Paper long abstract:

Despite the Paris agreement's requirement of a dramatic reduction in fossil fuel emissions to stay within 2 degrees of global warming, the predictions of future energy demand by the International Energy Agency predict a rise in fossil fuels that majorly exceeds this target. Though such forecasts are global, the decision to drill or not to drill is made by nations and by companies according to the political, economic and geological possibilities of specific countries and seabeds.

This paper proposes to examine the workings of the prospective and imagined petroleum resources in the Norwegian Arctic, and how both the government and petroleum companies plan and prioritize continued investments in the era of climate change. With a fortune largely built on the production of oil and gas, petroleum keeps a powerful hold on imagined futures for Norway as a whole and for local communities. Though resources are elusive until a firm decision to extract it is made, such decisions have profound and uneven impacts long before they materialize or fail to materialize. The process from prospection to extraction involves a myriad of actors and practices, from governmental strategies and seismic surveying, to industry priorities and civil society expectations. Anthropology can make a powerful contribution to our understanding of these social and material relations, not only of how petroleum-dependent societies 'live in denial' (Norgaard 2009), but also how petroleum companies think and how local communities come to live with the outcomes, whether or not specific resources materialize.