Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of oil’s materiality and its technological infrastructure within political competition and power struggles. It will be shown that the techno-social arrangements of oil are inevitably embedded in political processes of realising rights, aims and claims.

Paper long abstract:

Classic political economy concepts like "rentier state" and "resource curse" mostly neglect a historical perspective and a perspective on socio-technical arrangements. In my paper I will present the techno-social arrangements of oil as a historical and inevitably also a political process by focusing on the roles materiality, territoriality and ownership play in the negotiation of oil in Niger. It will be shown that the claims raised by political actors around the three different oil sites - the site of oil extraction, oil refinement and the capital as the center of political administration - were highly territorialized. Each region's political claims are based on a different understanding of "whom belongs the oil" triggered by a strategic political decision of the former Nigerien government to implement the oil refinery in Zinder region, 400km west of the oil extraction sites. Furthermore, the resources' materiality and characteristics of everyday usage seem to influence the processes of realizing claims. In regard to oil the first addressee of accusations is the national government whereas for the uranium or gold production the first addressees of accusations are foreign companies and nations. This is because as interlocutors stated: "oil passes through the people's hands" which designates that especially in cities nearly everyone relies on cheap fuel whereas by contrast "no one in Niger has neither seen nor used uranium or gold". Studies on oil therefore have to widen their perspective from the distribution of fiscal revenues to the materiality and technological infrastructure of oil.