87 Blankness: The Architectural Void of North Sea Energy Logistics Nancy Couling and Carola Hein Introduction focus on spaces of ocean-borne energy logistics Energy logistics is the management of intangible and their landside extensions, which have devel- flows of petroleum, gas, electricity, and of their oped into specialised, impermeable structures of physical counterparts, such as cables, pipelines energy extraction, transportation, transformation and drilling platforms. Since the mid-twentieth and storage around the North Sea. The tangible and century, these systems and structures have been intangible elements of energy logistics are a huge a major determining factor in the spatial configu- but largely invisible space. They are a key shaper ration of the North Sea region. The structures of of ocean urbanisation1 and they are spatially and energy logistics are invisible – linear, frictionless, financially the most expansive layer of the global automated or buried, and cut off from public access; petroleumscape.2 Architectural tools of mapping, and omnipresent – vast, ubiquitous, and controlling analysis, and representation can render this space increasing areas of both land and sea. Operating visible, describe its formal properties and invite in the visual background, energy logistics shapes public access and debate. In a preliminary step, the form and function of the built environment. Its these tools mediate the human position in the world networks have created a framework for landside and both question and clarify complex spatio-cultural development and for marine spatial planning, yet the relationships. The operators of energy logistics intensification of logistical activity has been accom- currently present its spatial impact to the public in panied by a paradoxical emptying of its spaces. The an overwhelmingly linear, two-dimensional way, but ocean’s cultural value and social status has been architecture has a responsibility to seek out the full evacuated in the process. This is a central paradox and often hidden dimensions of such mechanisms, of logistical space: logistics is paramount to global including their social and political dimensions. In a urbanisation, yet the structures it produces are the second step, architecture can then propose new elephant in the architectural dining room, too large readings and articulate spatial potential. to be ignored and too awkward to be discussed. Exploring energy logistics’ impact on waters and In response to the questions posed in this issue coastlines through the example of the North Sea, of Footprint – Have logistics accidentally created this article first shows how this vast, rich, historic subversive architectural conditions despite their space has been transformed into a crowded indus- inherent anti-architectural tendencies? – we argue trial void. Petroleum has been a main driver of this that energy logistics forms a series of subversive process. Secondly, it explores the multiple and spaces in critical need of architectural intervention, largely unrecognised ways in which energy logistics both in order to expose and to enrich them. We has shaped the surface of the sea and the invisible 23 The Architecture of Logistics | Autumn / Winter 2018 | 87–104 88 sea-floor, and how together with legal and plan- Then eighteenth-century early industrial capi- ning interventions, new unfamiliar structures are talism, rooted in landed place, conceptualised the rapidly evolving. The third section examines energy ocean as non-developable void.5 This transforma- logistics as it emerges from the sea and ‘solidifies’ tion of the map reflects the growth of European at landings, and how existing UK port-towns are sea-powers and their view of the sea as a place to affected by mutations in the delivery system. exert and consolidate their political and economic strength. This did not mean territorial domination of Despite its evasive nature, energy logistics has the seas; rather, the mercantilist states, in particular set up architectural conditions in each of these the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, aimed to contexts. In the final section, we approach these defend the unhindered sea-borne trade on which conditions through the concept of blankness, as their economies were based. expressed in the writings of the architectural critic Jeffrey Kipnis and the philosopher and politician The ocean void served nations and growing Roberto Mangabiera Unger. We propose that their corporations at the time of industrialisation and ideas have the potential to interpret the concep- changing energy consumption patterns. It was also tual void of energy logistics in a completely fresh a time when land masses were more and more manner, demanding new social meanings, political settled and scrutinised. The use of petroleum first engagement, and architectural visions. as lighting oil and then as engine fuel at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century Part I: The emergence of the industrial void encouraged investors to scale up industrial petro- The North Sea and its coastline stand as an example leum drilling and processing, creating a need to of a saturated space of logistics that is widely connect areas of production and consumption viewed by the public as a void. This paradoxical around the globe. Shipping was the cheapest solu- spatial condition has been gradually constructed tion for transportation from sites of production to by corporations and governments over several sites of consumption. The perceived emptiness of centuries, with an acceleration of the process due the ocean disguised the rapid growth of petroleum to industrialisation, low prices and availability after shipping, first from the United States and later from the Second World War. The diverse temporalities around the world to the ports of the North Sea. and fluctuating fortunes of energy logistics are illustrated in particular by the development of refineries Scholars have recognised a correspondence in ports around the North Sea and the emergence of between a nation’s energy consumption and its offshore extraction.3 material prosperity – since the use of coal to transform production methods in the industrial In his comprehensive study of ocean space across historical phases and societies, revolution in eighteenth-century Great Britain, Phil energy consumption has continuously increased Steinberg discusses the evolution of a modern and living standards for the larger public have western idealisation of the ocean surface as a ‘great improved.6 This tendency has led to the transfor- 4 void’. Maritime cartography up to the sixteenth mation of ocean space, coastlines, ports and cities century features, through increased shipping of oil, logistical devel- expressing both real and imagined experiences at opment and offshore energy production. In the early sea, but by the seventeenth century, the sea (as years, ports had been sites for importing, storing, mapped by Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit, and redistributing refined oil. Greater control over for example) had become largely empty. [Fig. 1] the process of production by the oil industry led to had incorporated narrative 89 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 Fig. 1: Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina 1949, full colour facsimile of the original 1539 edition. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Fig. 2: Energy logistics, North Sea, December 2017. Source: www.havbase.no. Fig. 3: National petroleum extraction grids, North Sea. Source: Nancy Couling. 90 also locating refineries at these port sites – a key set up through legal devices, engineering, and world element in petroleum logistics. Refining near places market logistics rather than integrated political/ of consumption allowed corporate or public refinery democratic planning processes. A variety of shields owners to buy foreign crude oil from various loca- guard the border between the public and logistics tions, and to refine it into the necessary products spaces. Individuals require specialist knowledge, 7 near the places where they would be used. Once skills, and security clearances to enter these realms. set up, refineries and their supporting infrastructure For the public at large, who do not have passkeys, are hard to move and remain as fixed ensembles the ocean takes on an abstract, remote status that despite the otherwise flexible pathways of oil flows. is home to select, highly specialised technical inter- Thus, even as petroleum structures disappear, ventions.10 If a commodity is kept at a distance age, or fail, this configuration has its own rules that and its materiality negated, its cultural dimension shape our future. becomes equally challenging to excavate. The public imagination is steered by national and corpo- Meanwhile, the ocean itself is not only home to a rate advertisement campaigns. Hein’s research, temporary layer of petroleum shipping, it has also among others, unravels the representative imagery long hosted the long-term physical structures of that cloaks the black and viscous oil and names the extraction. In 1949, after Soviet engineers discov- parties who dominate the production of oil narra- ered offshore oil in commercial quantities, they built tives. Governments have issued celebratory visuals the Neft Daşları settlement, an extensive network of oil infrastructure on official documents such as of drilling platforms, housing, and leisure structures, stamps and banknotes whereas corporations glorify around a hundred kilometres from Baku and fifty the positive impact of petroleum through adver- kilometres offshore. This ‘town’ heralded a new era tising, information booklets, and even art.11 This is of ocean urbanisation through oil. Twenty years a dangerous fiction and at the same time a sleight later, the discovery of the Norwegian North Sea of hand, since corporations and nations control the field of Ekofisk (1969) by Phillips, an American oil spaces of oil and gas in secrecy and concealment, company, brought the topographic and geological making it extremely difficult to site as well as sight.12 properties of the northern European continental shelf sharply into focus for national and corpo- The oil and gas industry is a multinational giant rate petroleum companies, inciting them to drill in without a face, both ostensibly liberated from and deeper and rougher waters. The last fifty years have inextricably implicated in state operations. Energy seen vast spatial transformations related to energy companies with identifiable leaders, such as John logistics both on- and offshore, and a new unfamiliar D. Rockefeller (the founder of Standard Oil) or logistical architecture in the offshore energy sector Pakhuismeesteren (the local company that first has begun to emerge. The North Sea is now one of stored oil in the port of Rotterdam), have evolved the most industrialised seas in the world.8 into a set of corporations with anonymous leadership, which is reflected in the industry’s logistical Oil has a ubiquitous, pervasive presence within spaces. Constantly ‘swapping assets’ and reconfig- our society. The oil industry has inserted physical uring ownership constellations, the industry is also artefacts into ocean space that are small in compar- made up of numerous operators delivering specific ison to the vast scale of the sea itself, but their services and has therefore mostly been able to presence is underpinned by rigid ordering systems avoid public liability. The largest oil spill in the 9 of territorial dimensions. These systems have been history of the offshore industry, the 2010 Deepwater 91 Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, is a tragic 13 and their results, and it is intrinsically violent.17 Given the previously The half-century of hydrocarbon extraction hinders mentioned relationship between energy consump- any attempts to question petroleum narratives and tion and material prosperity, it comes as no surprise practices. illustration of this point. that the objectives of this industry resonate with neo-liberal practice in business and politics more Part II: North Sea energy logistics generally, even though the UN led countries into the Energy logistics dominates the space of the North 2015 Paris Agreement over CO2 emissions. Sea at the territorial scale, yet the material traces of this sector have been hard to decipher and pin Journalists report a particularly contradictory rela- down. The North Sea has historically formed the tionship between the UK government’s commitment central logistical space of a highly active trading to renewables and the important revenues gained realm, which extended east to the Baltic Sea and from the oil and gas industry.14 The US president the central European river system, west across the has acted more directly and announced his with- Atlantic and south to the Mediterranean. Traditionally drawal from the agreement in 2018 to support the a trading ground for the exchange of furs, grain, country’s oil industry. timber, and luxury goods, today the North Sea is characterised by the generation and exchange of The dominant presence of multinational energy corporations in ocean space has resulted in the energy – an indispensable, shapeshifting, and often invisible commodity. erasure of a common non-industrial (non-oil-based) concept of the sea. We argue that the homoge- The North Sea measures around six hundred neous, infinitely extendable extraction grid of the kilometres at its widest part, a distance that the North Sea, created by nations under pressure from Vikings easily crossed in four to five days.18 corporations, exemplifies Henri Lefebvre’s notion Frequent exchange across the sea meant coasts of abstract space.15 Lefebvre makes it clear that had more in common with their opposite shores the state, having gained its sovereignty through than with their hinterlands. After the departure of the latent or overt violence, goes about accumulating Romans around the first century AD, control of trade wealth and land, imposing administrative divisions, around the North Sea changed hands several times and ‘aggressing nature’ according to the ration- over the centuries, beginning with the Frisians (first 16 He argues that the political to eighth century), followed by the Vikings (eighth principle of unification (of legislation, culture, knowl- to tenth century), and subsequently the Hanseatic edge, and education) is imperative to this project, League (eleventh to fourteenth century). All of these without which it cannot be realised. National inter- groups were highly skilled navigators who knew the ventions work hand in hand with the demands of seasons and the North Sea tides and currents; their global corporations in the field of energy logistics. logistical space was a kinetic, topographical zone The establishment of ‘unified’ exploration legis- filled with human activity and the narratives of first- lation in the North Sea as discussed in Part II of hand experience. The Vikings did not use maps, this article, is a clear example. This principle of but instead communicated navigational informa- unification explains the simultaneously abstract tion through the spoken word. Before road- and rail and concrete character of the state’s institutional networks, sea-crossings connecting to coastal and space. Passing for absence, abstract space in fact inland waterways comprised the major logistical conceals the presence of operational procedures space of northern Europe.19 ality of accumulation. 92 Since the mid-twentieth century, North Sea offshore fields, revealing the North Sea’s central oil and gas production has made a vital contribu- seam dividing the Norwegian and UK Exclusive tion to global energy supplies, occupying second Economic Zones. place in combined offshore oil/gas quantities in 2006 after the Persian Gulf.20 It is still the location Not only a petroleum-based energy landscape, of the most offshore rigs world-wide with a count the North Sea is also coveted by the post-oil energy of 184 in 2018.21 The 185 million people living in industry. Under current international objectives the highly industrialised northern European coun- to reduce CO2 emissions, formalised in the 2015 tries of the North Sea watershed also consume the United Nations Paris Agreement, the North Sea highest proportion of northern European energy. Yet has been earmarked by the EU as a favourable despite North Sea oil and gas production, the EU site for the rapid expansion of offshore wind-energy as a whole is marked by a significant energy gap production.27 Augmenting existing energy logistics, between supply and demand and is still 80 percent this sector’s activities create additional logistical dependent on oil imports. 22 Energy logistics there- networks of component production (turbines, fore not only laces through and around the North blades, transformers, monopoles, cables, founda- Sea extraction sites, but also carry out the func- tions), assembly, servicing, and delivery routes. tions of transport, storage, and relocation of oil and These uses compete for space with food produc- gas from external sources. The sea-surface and tion, transportation, military activities, sand and floor comprise the double ‘motherboard’ of northern gravel extraction, fish and bird sanctuaries, and European energy transactions. other protected natural areas. Intensification of 23 all activities has resulted in spatial competition. In Energy logistics appears on the surface of the response, the EU now requires all littoral nations to sea as a fleeting, yet continuous stream of ship- produce Maritime Spatial Plans by 31 March 2021.28 ping, which is becoming increasingly consolidated Originally a UNESCO initiative to improve cross- through electronic systems and dedicated deep- sector coordination of multiple maritime uses,29 water routes. According to EU port statistics, liquid Marine Spatial Planning has since developed into a bulk goods headed the list of cargo handled by type specialised discipline, for which educational institu- at 38 percent in 2015, followed by dry bulk goods at tions have set up courses and qualifications.30 The 23 percent and containerised goods at 21 percent.24 North Sea has become a crowded and contested In Europe’s top port of Rotterdam, crude oil, mineral realm. Through these plans, the space of energy oil products and liquified natural gas accounted for logistics clearly emerges in its full force. [Fig. 4] 40 percent of port throughput by weight in 2017, therefore more tons of liquid bulk goods travel The steady, periodic sea-surface of shipping is through North Sea ports than containers. Offshore mirrored on the seafloor by an invisible template shipping cargos, volumes, and frequencies are of cables and pipelines. As a liquid medium for spatially elusive. The map in figure 2 translates data systems of flow and exchange, the ocean itself is transmitted from the Automatic Identification System an environment of minimal friction, ease of transfer, for the one-month period of December 2017 into and minimal boundaries. Here, legal structures are a spatial format, rendering shipping pathways for less solid than on land, where ownership principles the energy industry visible across the entire North have long legacies. Outside the twelve nautical Sea.26 In addition to oil and gas tankers, the map mile territorial boundary, which in economic terms also shows the routes of service vessels to and from directly translates into tax advantages, the sea is 25 93 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 4: Spatial plan for the German North Sea, 2009. Source: BSH. Fig. 5: Europipe I & II receiving terminal in Dornum in Northern Germany. Source: Statoil. 94 thus an ambiguous space.31 The political neutrality Netherlands) in 1959, the petroleum industry pres- of this space, its extra-territorial status endorsed by sured the UK and Norwegian governments to international law, and the relative technical ease of proceed with national legislation on sovereignty over offshore operations, make subsea pipelines more the seabed and natural resources, eager to explore attractive than overland options: ‘Offshore lines the hydrocarbon potential of the continental shelf. In minimise issues of land ownership and concerns of March 1965, the Norwegian and UK governments political instability.’32 According to the UN Convention jointly agreed to divide the North Sea into quadrants on the Law of the Sea, all states are entitled to lay according to the median line principle of one degree or maintain cables and pipelines on the continental latitude by one degree longitude. On the Norwegian shelf, and coastal states cannot impede such activi- continental shelf, quadrants were then subdivided ties.33 This complex web of infrastructure supports into twelve blocks of 15’ latitude x 20’ longitude, offshore extraction sites. Oil and gas pipelines of corresponding to about 10x25km, whereas the UK differing sizes connect satellite platforms to each subdivision contained thirty smaller blocks. This other as well as to the main facility on land, while continuous extraction grid formalised the offshore fluids and ‘umbilicals’ – a combined string of steel petroleumscape. It has become the state’s frame- pipes – deliver further fluids, controls, power, and work for issuing licenses to exploration companies communication from the land side. This ubiqui- anywhere on the continental shelf. [Fig. 3] tous, invisible underwater infrastructure will remain in place even when it is no longer used – unlike International legislation further refined the occu- installations, according to decommissioning law pation of the seas in the third UN Convention on pipelines are not subject to a legal requirement the Law of the Sea of 1982, which established a 34 Some environmentalists 200-nautical mile offshore Exclusive Economic argue that removing this infrastructure can often Zone for all coastal nations – a radical new spatial be more harmful to the marine habitat than leaving feature of unprecedented global proportions that it in place. They therefore remain attached to the consumes around 36 percent of the world oceans.36 North Sea floor as permanent fixtures, unseen from Planning activity was then unleashed as coastal above and evolving into new cyber seascapes as nations began to organise this new offshore territory. they are taken over by marine life. This logistic Germany was the first European nation to produce nervous system is threaded through the seafloor’s legislative spatial plans for their part of the North very composite matter. and Baltic Seas in 2009, within which securing and of disposal after use. strengthening safe and unimpeded shipping routes Above and beyond energy’s physical infrastruc- was a national priority. The plan’s shipping corridors ture, the case of the North Sea demonstrates the created large residual fields for wind-energy devel- expansive, rigid, invisible ordering systems within opment – Germany’s second economic priority. The which offshore operations are embedded; a system dominance of logistical space in Maritime Spatial that was swiftly established in response to the needs Planning is most vividly demonstrated in this plan. of the oil industry. The basis for offshore legisla- [Fig. 4] tion was established at the second UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in Geneva in 1958, the UN Part III: The architecture of energy logistics response to heightened maritime territorial conflicts The transfer of energy from land to sea produces after the Second World War, in particular in rela- new interfaces and global geographies. We discuss 35 Following the architectural results of this transfer through two significant onshore gas finds in Groningen (the instances: landings and mutations. At landings, the tion to offshore oil and gas resources. 95 infrastructure of energy logistics is inserted into to camping grounds on the East Yorkshire coast landscapes outside of established towns, whereas (UK), for example, or on the moors of Ostfriesland mutations refers to the effects of energy logistics as (Germany). it interacts with established urban areas, in particular ports. Energy logistics sustains and promotes Landings inhabit morphological landscapes, but movement, but at nodal sites of system transfer, deny the architectural opportunity afforded by their more complicated processes take place and linear volume, function, placement, and human dimension. modules multiply and expand into industrial-scale Europipes I and II deliver gas from the Norwegian plants that occupy large sites. Here, as Rania part of the North Sea, Europipe I in a direct line from Ghosn argues, ‘Energy needs space’. Refineries, the Draupner E riser platform, to within five kilome- storage tanks, port facilities, and pipeline landings tres of the German coastline.40 From there they take transform regional landscapes in ways that are a specialised pathway determined by the highly foreign to established patterns of local settlement, valuable and protected Wadden Sea ecosystem, in particular persistently avoiding the emergence of which is listed under UNESCO World Heritage clas- architectural form. sification. The pipeline is steered through a tunnel 37 lying seven to eight metres under the seabed to According to network theory, the spatial aspects reach dry ground behind the dykes and arriving of network behaviour are irrelevant to a system, at the Europipe Receiving Facility (ERF) terminal which is based on the vertex and the edge – a just outside Dornum – a village with a popula- path connecting vertices. density, and 38 connectivity Notions of distance, tion of around 4,600. At the receiving facility, the mathematically gas is measured and adjusted for transfer into the defined according to the characteristics of these two European onshore network involving preliminary elements. The urban planner and theorist Gabriel filtering, pressure reduction, and reheating, since Dupuy named the three main criteria character- the gas has lost heat through the offshore segment. ising modern urban networks: topological, kinetic Thus such landings constitute a major planning 39 are Networks direct energy logistics, exercise; the facility covers a site of eight hectares which means that specific spatial phenomena and includes a range of building types, which are result from the connections to established urban however designed so as not to be there; ‘In order tissue. The shifting patterns of energy transfer are to minimize the visual impact, a maritime design evident in the post-World War II transformation of was implemented in the architecture of the ERF coastlines and ports around the North Sea. Here, and some vegetation planting in the surrounding results of the restless mutations of neo-liberal sea- had been carried out.’41 The project is architectur- borne logistics have produced different versions of ally mute, avoids contact with the adjacent town, is architectural stagnation and blankness. Developers secured, and specialised. The ‘designers’ have not have exploited the spatial and legislative freedom of exploited the potential of expressing the ongoing the vast unimpeded realm of the sea and expanded material processes or the importance of this offshore energy logistics without coordinated plan- connection to European energy networks through ning. However, in order to distribute energy to user architectural means. [Fig. 5] and adaptive. populations, they must negotiate the land-sea interface. This requires the convergence of cables and It is deep in the earth where energy such as gas pipelines into restricted corridors. Energy logistics fills out a pre-defined form. The major European then emerges from the sea in visible form at unspec- gas connections trace peripheral rings around main tacular landings on sparsely populated sites – next cities, converging at sites of storage. These patterns 96 of circulation still remain perfectly concealed and energy industries, the pressure on ports for adap- operate just outside established patterns of human tive responses, and above all the ensuing trail of settlement. But it is these locations that express social and urban degradation. Grimsby was an our deep geological relationship to oil and gas. The important trading port across the North and Baltic cavern site Etzel in North Germany offers storage Seas in cotton, salt, iron and agricultural machinery, capacity for oil and gas within excavated salt forma- and particularly in coal and timber.42 Coal mined in tions over one thousand metres underground the south Yorkshire coalfields was taken to Grimsby extending four kilometres vertically and twelve by for short-sea shipment around the coasts to national five kilometres horizontally. Caverns accessed destinations. After 1945, the increase in energy by boreholes are solution mined of the salt in consumption combined with decreasing domestic vertical volumes ranging between about 250,000 coal production meant that British coastal ports and 700,000 cubic metres. A total of seventy-five imported coal to fuel their power stations. caverns can hold forty-six million cubic metres of oil and gas with additional expansion potential in To meet the increasing energy demand, the port reserve. Initiated with thirty-three caverns in 1971 of Grimsby was bypassed in favour of its neighbour, under the new government oil storage strategy as a Immingham, and instead experienced a dramatic response to unstable supplies and the oil crises, the rise and fall in prosperity through the fishing industry. site then slowly increased its gas storage capacity Between 1970 and 2013 the number of trawlers to forty-one caverns as the Europipe I and II came based in the port dropped from four hundred to five. online in 1995 and 1999, respectively. The scale and Grimsby post-war housing estates were gripped by shape of the total Etzel salt formation is indiscern- massive unemployment, making them the second ible from above. Embedded in hollowed-out shapes most deprived in the UK. But the legacy of Grimsby’s resembling dormant, suspended cocoons, here past wealth is still visible in the historic buildings of energy momentarily escapes its logistic circuit to the fish docks, such as the Grimsby Ice Factory, and rest close to its own place of origin. [Fig. 6] Although the Kasbah – a quarter of historic shops, smoke- unseen, in order to translate and communicate this houses, and cafes, characteristic of the fishing immense geological scale to the public, architec- industry’s high period between the late nineteenth tural drawing and rendering techniques are used. and early twentieth century – which is now nearly It is through these drawings that potential channels deserted and barely generating revenue. The of spatial understanding regarding the spaces of Kasbah is currently a managerial question-mark energy logistics, are offered. for owners Associated British Ports – a blank with potential. In the port, the berths vacated by trawlers The twin UK Humber estuary ports Grimsby are slowly being replaced by new vessels employed and Immingham illustrate the types of mutations in service of the expanding North Sea offshore wind produced by networked energy systems as they industry. interact with local urban conditions. A third port, Hartlepool, is an example of an unusual recovery Ahistorical, no-name ports offer advantages to strategy within mutating cycles of energy logistics. energy logistics over ports with established towns. Until 1945 the UK had been mainly fuelled by coal, Around thirteen kilometres along the estuary from mined in the coal belts of central England, Wales, Grimsby, Immingham is only a small town, but it is and Scotland and transported by rail to industrial the UK’s first port in terms of tonnage and second towns and ports throughout the country. Grimsby’s in terms of value. A totally artificial construct, it was history exemplifies the restless changes in the built by the Humber Commercial Railway and Dock 97 Company in 1906–12 primarily for the export of topside from Brent Delta, a Shell-operated field coal. The new Humber location was an alternative in the northern North Sea, arrived at the northern to extending the Grimsby port due to its naturally UK port of Hartlepool for dismantling and resale as deep navigable channel, but before the construc- scrap metal by British company Able UK. [Fig. ] tion of the railway and docks, Immingham was a village with a population of less than three hundred Landings for the logistical giants of such topsides so labour for the developing docks came from are also highly specialised sites with heavily rein- Grimsby.43 Port facilities here expanded after World forced docks to handle the weight. Together, the War II with an oil terminal (1969), a bulk terminal for ports of Grimsby, Immingham and Hartlepool coal export and iron ore import (1970), a gas jetty for demonstrate how cycles of specialisation, resource LPG import (1985), an international terminal for bulk exploitation, decline and redefinition determine cargo including coal (2000), and most recently the the network of energy logistics, steering its search Renewable Fuels Terminal, which supplies imported for optimal routes and nodes. An estimated 1200 wood pellets to Drax – the combined bio and coal wells are to be plugged and abandoned and their power-station with the UK’s highest generating structures removed from the North Sea in the capacity. These expansions occurred after mecha- foreseeable future, making decommissioning an nisation of port systems, therefore required limited important economic sector and a initiating a new additional labour. The Port of Immingham holds 28 chapter in the history of North Sea oil.44 percent of the UK’s refining capacity, but its diversification across the energy spectrum demonstrates Conclusion: the possibilities of blankness the level of port adaptability demanded by central The space of energy logistics across seas and nodes in the logistic system of UK energy delivery. It coastlines is continually reorganised by nations and is an example of the type of port that is able to meet corporations in what Harvey and Brenner discuss such requirements precisely because it is detached as a process of ‘creative destruction’.45 This process and anonymous – a port without a town. produces differential, uneven spatial development in ongoing sequences that can destabilise estabreveal lished urban formats. Therefore, energy logistics this UK port to be both a mutating site and a new plays a vital role in the shaping of the built envi- type of landing. Hartlepool has a legacy of mari- ronment both on land and at sea – a role in urgent time industries suffering from economic decline. need of recognition by professionals. Architects, The thriving shipbuilding and steelwork industries engineers, logistic planners and lawyers must take experienced setbacks after heavy bombing in the on expanded and intersecting roles in order to find Second World War. Subsequent de-industrialisation new forms and expressions for this century’s spatial and the closure of the British Steel Corporation in challenges, in particular across the land-sea inter- 1977 contributed to the highest levels of unemploy- face. We urge for architectural interventions that ment in the UK at the time. Today a new generation critically reflect on questions of access and visibility, of energy logistics is delivering a major commodity develop new typologies and programmatic overlays, to Hartlepool and other specially equipped ports. and find architectural expression for the intersection These are severed topsides of decommissioned of natural and cultural ecosystems generated by rigs. Topsides are literally the part of the rig above energy logistics. Recent developments at Hartlepool the waterline, functioning like petroleum factories with production facilities and accommodation, In particular, infrastructural systems utilised by in this case for 160 people. On 2 May 2017, the energy logistics have an important public dimension. 98 Fig. 6: Visualisation of storage caverns Etzel. Source: Storage Etzel GmbH. 99 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 7: Brent Delta topside at Able Seaton Port, Hartlepool, UK. Source: Able UK. Fig. 8: Section: Barents Sea water-masses in flux. Source: Laba, EPFL. Fig. 9: Barents Calling, perspective view. Source: Laba, EPFL. 100 Rather than being part of an extended public design describing ‘possible futures for a more democratic brief, urban infrastructure has mostly been hidden society and a more empowered individual’.51 He underground, functionally restricted to strategic urged them to create a greater range of narratives, delivery tasks and taken entirely for granted. The resist societal norms, and foster conflict between question of its larger role in our relationship, for alternatives.52 According to Unger, architecture example with nature, has rarely been addressed. must embrace the ambivalence of both pragmatic, Architects Mason White and Lola Shepherd propose established systems and inspirational, transcendent that infrastructure could potentially catalyse new spatial ideas. In his concept of radical-democratic economies that are adaptive and responsive to politics, an architectural vision is needed.53 But such environment and use. 46 In this century, things we have previously buried and forgotten are returning a concept and such a vision are critically lacking in the field of energy logistics. with urgent environmental questions that we are ill equipped to answer. Geographers Maria Kaika The political dimension of Unger’s argument and Erik Swyngedouw argue that it is exactly this resonates with the politics of energy logistics in the hidden form of urban networks which has separated neoliberal market system. To differing degrees, this the ‘processes of social transformation of nature logistical space has, over the continuing course of from the process of urbanisation’.47 Understanding industrialisation, devoured its counterparts of social the apparent spatial and conceptual blankness of and technical labour and of historical spaces of energy logistics is the first step towards a conscious, trade interaction. Smooth, efficient logistics devel- meaningful, and inclusive design for their extended oped in the service of the global economy cuts terrain: tracts of land, sea, and the connecting off social interactions: security zones at ports and thresholds. The cases discussed here illustrate the around offshore wind parks and rigs prevent intru- ways in which energy logistics has refused architec- sion; compressed shipping turnaround times in ture. However, we argue that interventions in this ports hinder crews from making real social contact field should be fundamental to the field of architec- on shore. Energy logistics, particularly offshore, is ture, and that architecture should not refuse energy still blank in architectural terms – that is, is we have logistics. not yet ascribed new democratic, socially-relevant meanings, heterogeneous human activities, cultural Jeffrey Kipnis discussed blankness as one of references or detailed forms of ownership to it. In the five criteria for a new architecture alongside the absence of such common meaning, nations and vastness, pointing, incongruity and incoherence/ corporations have prescribed spatial patterns and 48 intensive coherence. At the time (1993), he named constructed banal enclosures on land and at sea. this quality partly in relation to postmodern architec- The conversation between Kipnis and Unger on the ture, and blankness was a potential release from notion of blankness calls to the general public to collage as the ‘prevailing paradigm of architectural acknowledge energy logistics as a key player in the The five criteria had first been shaping of our built environment and for architects formulated and introduced by the neo-modern social to consciously move into this domain of design, theorist Roberto Mangabiera Unger in ‘The Better including its offshore spaces. heterogeneity’. 49 Futures of Architecture’, his contribution to the Anyone conference in Los Angeles in 1991.50 Unger In stark contrast with the eighteenth-century called for architects to insist on new expressions vision of the sea as a great void and subsequent of collective life in physical form, and for proposals capitalist emptiness, for Kipnis, Unger’s blankness 101 was architecturally optimistic and full of potential. inherited logistical systems. The role of architec- It was neutral, non-ascribed, without formal refer- ture has long been to translate such functionalities ence, and combined with other criteria including into meaningful habitats. This essay argues that vastness, could enable incongruous entities to enter the blankness of sea-borne energy logistics, as a into dialogue with each other while also avoiding corporate strategy designed to make us look away, 54 Kipnis’s can – and must – do the opposite: attract attention new architecture proposed large mute volumes and inspire architectural intervention. The alter- formed by incongruous, unfamiliar geometries native understanding of blankness discussed by that set up unexpected relations to their surround- Kipnis offers a way of responding to ocean volumes, ings and therefore enhanced the heterogeneity of celebrating architectural manoeuvring space and the resulting spaces. We argue that considering ultimately imagining such interventions. ‘traditional hierarchical spatial patterns’. oceanic water masses as vast, deep volumes rather than flattened planes can stimulate architectural Some designers are already taking on the chal- thinking along the lines Kipnis intends. In addition lenge. The project illustrated in figure 8, ‘Resources: to volume, they possess cores and density; prop- A Territorial Strategy for the Barents Sea’, demon- erties normally associated with solids. While still strates unfamiliar to architects, these organic geometries extraction grids can be usurped for new purposes are precisely determined according to the oceano- and manipulated to engage with the fundamental graphic parameters of depth, currents, bathymetry, spatial properties of the sea: kinetic, layered, emer- temperature, and salinity. gent and periodic. This strategy uses the petroleum how the frameworks of established grid to set up a highly flexible fishing tool that In response to radical transformations generated manages shifting, four-dimensional fish-harvesting by a neoliberal mode of operations, energy logis- fields according to stock numbers and habitats over tics developed and expanded unchecked across time. The gridded unit is an abstract coordinate ocean space. Throughout this process, planners reference over the full water depth, but is verti- prioritised economic and logistic concerns, but cally subdivided into three zones; surface, middle erased the public in the process. How can the tools and deep waters. The management tool opens of an architect expand and dismantle this sectorial different fields and layers for fishing, which change approach to design and communicate an integrated over time in response to the state of the fish stocks, public vision? Rather than the largest periphery, the since some species require longer recovery periods high seas are the largest public space on earth and or may have been depleted due to other environ- require innovative approaches that can both capture mental factors. the public imagination and develop scenarios in tune with the dynamics of the sea itself. Conceptions of A second architectural project, depicted in figure 9, heterogeneous diversified futures for energy logis- proposes a new offshore typology. Combining the tics, particularly in offshore space, are lacking. functions of search and rescue, vessel service, a Visions are required that can create awareness and swell-activated power plant, biofuel production, inspire design research, extending the field of archi- meteorological observation, and algae cultivation tecture beyond the shoreline and embracing the in vertical succession through a tower, this project spatial challenges of the ocean. The sea is not a reinterprets the lighthouse typology as a beacon void or a tabula rasa, but a moving volume housing and watchtower to protect both humans and the differentiated habitats and internal spaces, including Barents Sea environment.55 It stands at a strategic 102 position relative to search and rescue operations Theory Review 21, no. 3 (2016): 349–374; Carola along the Northern Sea Route in the Barents Sea, Hein, ‘Oil Spaces: The Global Petroleumscape its craggy outline offering migrating birds, mammals, in the Rotterdam/The Hague Area’, Journal of and corals a range of resting places. Urban History 44, no 5 (2018): 887-929. https://doi. org/10.1177/0096144217752460. The North Sea has developed historically as 3. Carola Hein, ‘Temporalities of the Port, the a vital logistical space, first filled then emptied of Waterfront and the Port City | PORTUS – Port-City large-scale human interaction, narratives, and Relationship and Urban Waterfront Redevelopment’, imagery. The sea space is now planned, monitored, PORTUS: RETE Online Magazine 29 (June 2015), excavated, mobilised for transport, and operation- http://portusonline.org. alised for energy production. As environmental 4. Philip E. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the considerations become urgent and fish stocks Ocean, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, collapse, as the climate changes and new genera- 2001). tions of offshore infrastructure are both installed 5. Ibid., 118. and dismantled, new architectural interventions are 6. Keith Chapman, North Sea Oil and Gas: A required which re-programme this logistical space Geographical Perspective (Newton Abbot: David and with heterogeneous human activities and reinvig- Charles, 1976). orate the public dimension of energy logistics and of our common ocean imagination. 7. Carola Hein, ‘Old Refineries Rarely Die’ Canadian Journal of History (forthcoming). 8. European Notes Sea 1. Nancy Couling, ‘Formats of Extended Urbanisation Co-Operation in Ocean Space’, in Emerging Urban Spaces- a Planetary Perspective, ed. Philipp Horn, Paola Alfaro under Committee Pressure: the (UK), Is Answer?’, ‘The North Regional Marine House of Lords Paper (London: House of Lords, 17 March 2015), https://publications.parliament.uk. d’Alençon, and Ana Claudia Duarte Cardoso, The 9. Nancy Couling, ‘Urbanization of the Ocean; Extractive Urban Book Series (Springer International Publishing, Geometries in the Barents Sea’, in Infrastructure 2018), XII, 219. Space, ed. Ilka and Andreas Ruby (Berlin: Ruby 2. For further analysis of the petroleumscape and detailed Press, 2016). exploration of some of the examples presented in this 10. Couling, ‘Formats of Extended Urbanisation’. article, see: Carola Hein, ‘Analyzing the Palimpsestic 11. Hein, ‘Oil Spaces’. Petroleumscape Urban 12. Sheena Wilson and Andrew Pendakis, ‘Sight, Site, History Blog (2016) [https://globalurbanhistory.com]; Cite. Oil in the Field of Vision’, Imaginations: Journal ‘Port Cities: Nodes in the Global Petroleumscape of Cross-Cultural Image Studies 3, no. 2 (2012): 4–5, of Rotterdam’, Global between Sea and Land’, Technosphere Magazine, http://imaginations.glendon.yorku.ca, accessed 9 July 15 April 2017; ‘Between Oil and Water: The Logistical 2018. Petroleumscape’, in The Petropolis of Tomorrow, ed. 13. Lance Duerfahrd, ‘A Scale That Exceeds Us: The Neeraj Bhatia and Mary Casper (New York: Actar/ BP Gulf Spill Footage and Photographs of Edward Architecture at Rice, 2013); ‘Global Landscapes Burtynsky’, Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural of Oil’, in New Geographies 2: Landscapes of Image Studies 3, no. 2 (2012): 115–129, http://imagi- Energy, ed. Rania Ghosn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard nations.glendon.yorku.ca, accessed 9 July 2018. University Press, 2009); Carola Hein and Mohamad 14. Felicity Lawrence and Harry Davies, ‘Revealed: BP’s Sedighi, ‘Iran’s Global Petroleumscape: The Role of Close Ties with the UK Government’, The Guardian, Oil in Shaping Khuzestan and Tehran’, Architecture 21 May 2015, https://theguardian.com. 103 15. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 16. Ibid. programme is available at IUAV, Venice; see their website: http://iuav.it. 31. This gave the undersea-routing option for the Nord 17. Ibid., 289 Stream double gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea significant 18. Michael Pye, The Edge of the World : How the North advantages over alternative routes on land. Source: Sea Made Us Who We Are (London: Penguin Books, Interview with Nord Stream Deputy Communications 2015). Director, 10 July 2012. 19. Henk Engel et al., eds., OverHolland 10: The 32. Willem J. Timmermans J, ‘The Future of Offshore Transformation of the Landscape of the Western Pipelining’, Offshore Magazine 62, no. 6 (6 January Region of the Netherlands (9th to 21st Century) (Amsterdam: Sun, 2011). 20. Lucien Chabason, ‘Toward International Regulation of Offshore Oil Drilling?’ in Oceans: The New Frontier, (Delhi: TERI Press, 2011), 216–19. by Region’, Statistica (website), 2018, https://statista.com. 22. North Sea 34. D. G. Gorman and June Neilson, eds., Decommissioning Offshore Structures (London; New York: Springer, 1998). 21. ‘Number of Offshore Rigs Worldwide as of January 2018 2002). 33. UN, ‘UNCLOS 1982’, 1982, http://un.org. 35. Arvid Pardo, ‘Speech to the United Nations General Assembly 22nd Session, Official Records.’ (United Nations, 11 January 1967), http://un.org. Sea 36. Nancy Couling, ‘Legislation of the Sea: Spatializing a Commission – Integration Approach to Sustainable Commission, ‘CPMR North New Urban Realm’, in ARCH+ Legislating Architecture Development in the North Sea Region’ (Brussels & Gothenburg: North Sea Commission, 27 November 2017), http://cpmr-northsea.org. New Geographies 2, 7–10. 23. The motherboard of a computer system facilitates communication between electronic components, including peripherals. liquefied natural gas, biofuels, liquid chemicals and edible oils & fats (eg palm oil). release, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 15 (Amsterdam: Techne Press, 2008). 40. Henning Grann, ‘Europipe Development Project: Managing a Pipeline Project in a Complex and 25. Port of Rotterdam, ‘Throughput Port of Rotterdam press 38. Mark E. J. Newman, Networks : An Introduction 39. Gabriel Dupuy, Urban Networks – Network Urbanism 24. Liquid bulk goods include crude oil, gasoline, diesel, 2017’, 49 no. 225 (2016): 120–23, http://archplus.net. 37. Rania Ghosn, ‘Energy as a Spatial Project’, in Ghosn, February 2018), https://portofrotterdam.com. 26. Introduced for vessels of a certain tonnage and function by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in 2004. Sensitive Environment’, in The Industrial Green Game, ed. Deanna J Richards (Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1997), 154–64, https://nap.edu. 41. Bioconsultant Schuchardt & Scholle, ‘Environmental Impact Assessment Europipe II in Germany: 27. Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary- Offshore & Onshore Section’, Environmental Impact General, United Nations, New York, as available on Assessment. Client: Statoil Deutschland (Bremen, https://treaties.un.org, accessed 3 June 2018. July 1998), https://equinor.com. 28. The European Parliament and the Council of the 42. Matthew Whitfield, ‘Grimsby Fishdocks – an European Union, ‘Directive 2014/89/EU’ (2014), http:// Assessment of Character and Significance’, Historic eur-lex.europa.eu England Kasbah Report (Great Grimsby Ice Factory 29. UNESCO, Marine Spatial Planning website, http:// msp.ioc-unesco.org, accessed 3 June 2018. 30. Currently a Master in Maritime Spatial Planning Trust, April 2009), http://ggift.co.uk. 43. R.N. Rudmose Brown, ‘Holderness and the Humber’, in Great Britain: Essays in Regional Geography, ed. 104 Alan G. Ogilvie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Biographies Press, 1928), 812–21. Carola Hein is professor and head of the History of 44. Julian Manning, Baker Hughes Process & Pipeline Architecture and Urban Planning Chair at TU Delft. She Services, presentation, Offshore Energy Conference, has published widely in the field of architectural, urban Amsterdam, 10 October 2017. and planning history and has tied historical analysis to 45. David Harvey, The Urban Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, contemporary development. She received a Guggenheim 1989). Neil Brenner, ‘Theses on Urbanization’, Public Fellowship to pursue research on The Global Architecture Culture 25, no. 1 (69) (1 January 2013): 85–114, of Oil and an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to inves- https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-1890477. tigate large-scale urban transformation in Hamburg in an 46. Mason White and Lola Shepherd, ‘New New Deal: international context between 1842 and 2008. Her current Infrastructures on Life Support’, in Infrastructure as research interests include the transmission of architectural Architecture : Designing Composite Networks, ed. and urban ideas, focusing specifically on port cities and Katrina Stoll and Scott Lloyd (Berlin: Jovis, 2010). the global architecture of oil. She has curated Oildam: 47. Maria Kaika and Erik Swyngedouw, ‘Fetishizing Rotterdam in the oil era 1862–2016 at Museum Rotterdam. the Modern City: The Phantasmagoria of Urban She serves as IPHS Editor for Planning Perspectives and Technological Networks’, International Journal of as Asia book review editor for Journal of Urban History. Urban and Regional Research 24, no. 1 (2000): Recent books include The Routledge Planning History 120–138, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00239. Handbook (2017) and Uzō Nishiyama: Reflections on 48. Jeffrey Kipnis and Alexander Maymind, A Question of Urban, Regional and National Space (2017). Qualities : Essays in Architecture (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2013), 294. Nancy Couling studied architecture at the University of 49. Ibid., 292. Auckland and completed her PhD on The Role of Ocean 50. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, ‘The Better Futures of Space in Contemporary Urbanization at the EPFL (Ecole Architecture’, in Anyone, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne) in 2015. She was (New York: Rizzoli, 1991). founding partner of the interdisciplinary Berlin practice 51. Ibid., 30. cet-0/cet-01 (1995–2010) and was a teaching assistant 52. Ibid., 30. in for Prof. Klaus Zillich of TU Berlin. She recently joined 53. Ibid., 35. the Chair of History of Architecture & Urban Planning, 54. Kipnis and Maymind, Question of Qualities, 294. TU Delft, as a Marie Curie Research Fellow with the 55. Harry Gugger, Nancy Couling, and Aurélie Blanchard, project OCEANURB – the Unseen Spaces of Extended eds., Barents Lessons: Teaching and Research in Organization in the North Sea, 2017–2019, investi- Architecture (Zürich: Park Books, 2012). gating the sea-borne spatial implications of extended urbanization.