Projects of devotion : energy exploration and moral ambition in the cosmoeconomy of oil and gas in the Western United States

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 715146. The authors also acknowledge the funding received to carry out this research from the Leverhulme Trust (ECF‐2013‐177) and the British Academy (EN150010).This article considers how people working in the oil and gas industry in Colorado perceive their involvement in energy exploration in relation to broader understandings of devotion, compassion, and outreach. I argue that although their energy projects may appear to merely echo companies’ formal promotional pitches, the oil field and corporate actors’ own moral ambitions reveal more-than-human cosmoeconomic visions of oil’s potentiality. This article thus demonstrates how multiple and diverging ethical registers intersect and inform the valuation of oil.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The oil price crisis of 1998

Oil prices have fallen since the end of November 1997 well below a level of $18 per barrel for dated Brent which petroleum-exporting countries and oil companies have been recently inclined to consider as a kind of acceptable norm. The fall in price has elicited rather speedily a producers’ response which involved both OPEC and non-OPEC countries

On oil peak or peaks?

The oil peak theory first advanced by Colin Campbell more than 25 years ago is influencing market expectations about the medium-term supply/demand balance in the world petroleum market. In the same vein, Matt Simmons has focused on the scarcity issue, arguing in his book – Oil Twilight in the Desert – that Saudi Arabia has much less oil than generally thought, and that its super-giant field, Ghawar, is seriously suffering from natural decline. These theories and views provide additional ammunition to those who have been consistently arguing that this supply/demand balance will increasingly become tighter because of oil consumption growth in China, India and in oil-exporting countries, and the failure of OPEC member countries and the international oil companies to invest as much as may be required in the exploration, development and production of crude oil

The oil price conundrum

The governments of oil-importing countries are worried about the recent high oil prices. They worry about possible macro-economic effects: inflation, recession, balance-of-payments deficits. The consumers of energy in those countries where fuels are not subsidised are angry about the higher prices of oil, gas and electricity. Unfortunately these higher prices have coincided with increases in the cost of food and other items of vital expenditures. Those who use fuels in significant quantities, such as fishermen or truck drivers, are protesting through strikes or motorway blockades in some European countries. Governments of importing countries could not remain indifferent to events too quickly labelled as the new oil price shock or the new oil crisis. Comparisons with the previous crises of the 1970s were hastily made but were more misleading than illuminating.</p

A dialogue between oil producers and consumers The why and the how

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:q92/04420(Dialogue) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo