Politics of Oil

Governing oil has been key to the emergence of particular sociotechnical realities throughout the last century and a half. A time-span of the modern/colonial which has been conceptualised by competing social science discourses as 'capitalism' and 'democracy'. A hydrocarbon centred era throughout which the political substance of oil in the form of fuel and energy, as infrastructure or as commodity has shaped the ecology of our politics. An epoch of 'petrocapitalism' and 'carbon democracy' we may refer to as 'oil modernity'. Recently, 'oil assemblages' have emerged in the capitalist periphery that have challenged the political economy of oil modernity. Thus, a particular category of oil politics has been made possible through the novel practices, technopolitics, expertise and governing oil at play in these sites. Such a 'critical oil politics' will be of greater significance within the epoch of transitions the contemporary world has now entered and as we begin to address the breaching of ecological frontiers.

The research project offers an analysis of contemporary instances of critical oil politics taken from Latin America and the Caribbean. The research focuses primarily on two oil assemblages and the forms of 'political oil' they put forward. It takes as its cases Venezuela's Petrocaribe - an oil and energy cooperation program established by the Bolivarian revolutionary government in 2005 - and its form of 'socialist oil', together with Ecuador's oil-based and environmentally informed Yasuni-ITT Initiative (2007-2013) and its promise of an 'oil that stays in the ground', an 'ecological oil'. Both Petrocaribe and the Yasuni-ITT Initiative put forward novel understandings of economy and particular oil objects that go beyond the oil commodity as they shaped Latin America's left turn. The research details both left turn oil assemblages in order to approach the forms of political oil they develop while seeking to comprehend their possibilities and limitations as critical oil politics. To do this the project focuses on particular practices and knowledges linked to the forms of political oil, which may be seen as constituting a novel governing of oil.

The project engages with postcolonial and assemblage approaches to politics and economy, but also builds on Latin American texts on oil. These approaches stand in tension with mainstream Anglophone political science approaches to the politics of oil, international relations and political economy. The project is in dialogue with and contributes to research within the social sciences seeking to incorporate and underscore the role of practices, materiality, and human/nonhuman relations into the study of politics, development, and international political economy.

This book presents three foresight scenarios for the development of the Caspian Sea region until 2025. The scenarios are titled "Caspia Inc.", "National Giants" and "Trade and Transit". The focus is on Central Asia as an energy-producing and -exporting region, Chinese Silk Road initiatives, the impact of climate change, the future of mining and resource extraction and the differences between the countries in the region.

Oil extraction is a useful optic for thinking and writing about the future of sustainable resource use. While concerns over the burdens of oil extraction tend to be of a planetary scale (e.g. discussions around fossil-fuel addiction, energy security, and climate change), in this chapter we zoom in to the case of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where indigenous peoples have raised profound questions about oil extraction practices and outcomes. Amazonian peoples’ refusal to oil extraction, in particular, has received significant global attention and is considered emblematic of indigenous peoples’ sustainability thinking. At the same time, this common narrative about indigenous political action hides the complex ways that Amazonian peoples relate to oil extraction. We focus on the case of Playas del Cuyabeno (Playas hereafter), a Kichwa community located in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon to illustrate how “sustainability” is not an abstract concept that can be applied worldwide seamlessly, but that thinking and acting sustainably emerges from locally-rooted visions of the past, present and future. In this chapter, we introduce the dominant ways in which sustainability and oil extraction are currently discussed in Ecuador, and how debates around oil extraction tend to reproduce a particular way of thinking about sustainability. Next, we lay out our conceptual framework for examining sustainability in Playas. Then, we briefly trace the experiences that shaped how Playas residents see themselves in relation to oil, first resisting and then acquiescing to oil extraction within their territory. In the subsequent section, we examine the conditions and subjectivities through which people of Playas came to position themselves not only as supporters of oil extraction, but as potential oil producers themselves, despite popular narratives that associate indigenous peoples with anti-oil politics. We interrogate concepts of sustainability by tracing the conditions that made it possible for Playas’ population to imagine an indigenous oil company as a vehicle of sustainability, noting that sustainable development planning is not the exclusive practice of elite state, non-governmental, and multilateral institutions. We highlight the intersectional dimensions of the decisions of indigenous leaders to embrace oil extraction in the name of social and environmental sustainability. There is no single relation that explains positioning vis-à-vis oil in local contexts, but multiple relations and complex histories that construct ways of seeing and acting.

This concluding chapter draws together the threads from the 18 case studies of oil- and gas-producing countries, relating them to the theoretical concept of ‘public brainpower’ and the arguments presented in the introductory chapter. It elaborates on the concept of public brainpower in greater detail, adding important caveats related to some possible detrimental effects of public debate: volatility, polarization, populism and mock democracy. Ten tenets on how to achieve public brainpower are formulated, and a ranking of the public brainpower of 33 resource-rich countries is presented. The chapter rounds off with suggestions for further research.

This introductory chapter establishes the analytical framework for the edited volume "Public Brainpower". The literature on the resource curse and institutions is briefly discussed, along with the work on civil society and the public sphere by Almond and Verba, Dahl, Habermas and Putnam. Drawing on these classics, the theoretical concept of ‘public brainpower’ is formulated. The main pillar of public brainpower is polycentricity, or the coexistence of many different public actors freely expressing their thoughts: individual citizens, political parties, trade unions, charities, companies, research institutes, religious institutions, mass media and government institutions. The more polycentric a society is, the greater is its brainpower: its memory becomes more comprehensive and multifaceted, different actors can perform quality control of each other’s ideas and arguments, and it is more difficult to repress challenging views. Above all, a polycentric society has a broader base for creativity. The greater the public brainpower of a society, the better its management of natural resources. Finally, the book's 18 case studies of oil- and gas-producing countries are briefly presented, along with the methodology and definitions of key terminology used throughout the volume.

The discovery of oil should transform economies, since oil revenues can be invested in infrastructure and the non-oil sector. Whilst oil discovery has transformed the economy of countries such as Indonesia, Norway and UK, the story is different in Sub-Saharan Africa. Available evidence in countries like Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Nigeria suggests that economic growth has an inverse relationship with oil production. Some researchers have attributed this to lack of quality institutions and the politics surrounding oil production. In this study, we take a critical look at the politics of oil production in Ghana and its potential implications for the oil sector and national development.

Oil extraction is a useful optic for thinking and writing about the future of sustainable resource use. While concerns over the burdens of oil extraction tend to be of a planetary scale (e.g. discussions around fossil-fuel addiction, energy security, and climate change), in this chapter we zoom in to the case of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where indigenous peoples have raised profound questions about oil extraction practices and outcomes. Amazonian peoples’ refusal to oil extraction, in particular, has received significant global attention and is considered emblematic of indigenous peoples’ sustainability thinking. At the same time, this common narrative about indigenous political action hides the complex ways that Amazonian peoples relate to oil extraction. We focus on the case of Playas del Cuyabeno (Playas hereafter), a Kichwa community located in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon to illustrate how “sustainability” is not an abstract concept that can be applied worldwide seamlessly, but that thinking and acting sustainably emerges from locally-rooted visions of the past, present and future. In this chapter, we introduce the dominant ways in which sustainability and oil extraction are currently discussed in Ecuador, and how debates around oil extraction tend to reproduce a particular way of thinking about sustainability. Next, we lay out our conceptual framework for examining sustainability in Playas. Then, we briefly trace the experiences that shaped how Playas residents see themselves in relation to oil, first resisting and then acquiescing to oil extraction within their territory. In the subsequent section, we examine the conditions and subjectivities through which people of Playas came to position themselves not only as supporters of oil extraction, but as potential oil producers themselves, despite popular narratives that associate indigenous peoples with anti-oil politics. We interrogate concepts of sustainability by tracing the conditions that made it possible for Playas’ population to imagine an indigenous oil company as a vehicle of sustainability, noting that sustainable development planning is not the exclusive practice of elite state, non-governmental, and multilateral institutions. We highlight the intersectional dimensions of the decisions of indigenous leaders to embrace oil extraction in the name of social and environmental sustainability. There is no single relation that explains positioning vis-à-vis oil in local contexts, but multiple relations and complex histories that construct ways of seeing and acting.