Crude Creativity: Science and Energy Imaginaries in the US Oil and Gas Industry

Dr Mette High will be giving a talk as part of the Petrocultures 2022 event, Stavanger, Norway

In this talk I will examine how oil and gas industry participants in Colorado reflect on the potential energy mix of the future. For them, petromodernity is a techno-scientific wonder that crystalizes the successful conjoining of wildcatter risk taking, geoscientific knowledge, and engineering endeavour. While renewable energy sources now increasingly appeal to politicians, publics and investors, these industry participants dismiss renewable energy imaginaries and regard oil and gas as resources that are destined to enjoy great longevity. They mock and ridicule renewable energy sources, scorning them for being ‘factually impossible’. While oil and gas industry participants see their own industry as a harbinger of innovation, they deem other industries void of such potential. Exploring these mocking dismissals, I will show how crude’s excesses that seep from the industry’s history and epistemes inform energy imaginaries and hinder the oil and gas industry’s own potential for innovation.