Paper short abstract:

This study argues that multinational oil enclaves promote the very tensions and insurgencies against which they were initially erected. It also argues that the oil enclave is the tip of the contractual iceberg which is a source of political problems of petrostates identified as resource curse.

Paper long abstract:

This study engages with the literatures on the "resource curse" and the "oil enclave." The analysis stems from an ethnographic field research conducted within one such enclave, a secured industrial colony established by a multinational oil company. It is argued that the oil enclaves, intended to divide foreign oil companies from potentially unstable situations, actually promote the very social tensions and insurgencies against which they were initially erected. This relationship calls for a critical assessment of how and to what ends the enclaved oil colonies function, as well as of the legal mechanisms that support them. To this end, it is argued in this study that production-sharing agreements, which are internationally sanctioned oil contracts binding the state and the oil company for decades, authorize the erection of industrial enclaves invariably marking oil production sites in the Global South. It is furthermore argued that the industrial enclave itself is only the tip of the contractual iceberg, which is part and parcel of political problems of petrostates and oil-exporters as described in the "resource curse" literature. This two-fold argument points to the need to expand the analytical frame of "resource curse" to include the global oil industry in the explanation of this persistent malfunction of the oil-rich states. In this regard, it is demonstrated that production-sharing agreements, which are extensively discussed in this study, help to capture the industry's' role in producing the "resource curse."