Image source: Photograph by Lisa B. Sells. Used with permission.
Cold Water Oil examines cultural imaginaries associated with fossil fuel extraction in the inhospitable but fragile waters of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
Around a third of the world’s oil and gas is produced from beneath the ocean floor, and this proportion is increasing as companies push into deeper and more remote areas. Cold Water Oil sheds light on overlooked histories, influential contemporary narratives, and emerging energy futures specifically associated with hydrocarbon extraction in what we call the “cold water offshore.”
Efforts to move towards more sustainable energy sources in cold oceans are highly uneven. While offshore wind and tidal energy are becoming increasingly important, and in some areas oil supplies beneath the seabed are reaching depletion, petroleum generally still retains its economic and political centrality. Extracting oil in cold oceans is exceedingly high risk, not just because of the contribution hydrocarbons make to climate change but also because these environments are especially fragile and difficult to remediate in the event of a spill. Yet industries and governments are reluctant to abandon the prospect of exploiting offshore reserves.
Cold Water Oil makes a timely contribution to contemporary public discussions about energy transition and climate crisis by identifying and examining the cultural narratives that keep us tethered to oil extraction in extreme ocean environments. It also intervenes in the interdisciplinary scholarly fields of energy humanities and critical ocean studies.
