Paper Short Abstract:

New regulations resulting from the twin forces of Indigenous reconciliation and energy transition are resulting in a regulatory thickening to surface geoscapes of NE British Columbia. This paper examines what these regulatory practices are doing and undoing to the western Canadian energy industry.

Paper Abstract:

Energy regulators in Canada purport to do the work of ensuring that activities unfold in a manner that ensures public safety and the environment while supporting Indigenous reconciliation, resource conservation, and a strong economy for the public good. As such regulators and regulatory policy constitutes resource-scapes as ethico-juridico-regulatory objects with multiple and often competing stakeholders. Given the vastness of such a project, much has overflowed the regulatory frame. Recently regulators have been confronting significant changes to federal and provincial legislation to meet global climate commitments, mitigate cumulative effects (see the case Yahey vs BC), and include deeper attention to biodiversity. As such, recent changes to regulations have expanded their scope in ways that appear to materially expand that which counts as a regulatory object. This paper therefore explores the regulatory thickening to surface geospaces of NE British Columbia to examine how and what these practices are (un)doing to the western Canadian energy industry. The paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork among energy producers that work the Montney formation in Western Canada.