Governing Offshore Oil: Mapping Maritime Political Space in Ghana and the Western Gulf of Guinea

• Published in: South Atlantic Quarterly
• Main Author: Chalfin, Brenda
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Duke University Press 2015
• Subjects: South Atlantic Ocean
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2831312; https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-pdf/114/1/101/471386/SAQ114_1_07Chalfin_Fpp.pdf

Ocean spaces are a dynamic arena of political transformation and claims-making essential to the unfolding of late capitalism. Indicative of the expanding geography of oil prospecting in the South Atlantic Ocean, the deep waters of the western Gulf of Guinea map a political economic frontier encompassing the maritime zones and resources of a swath of West African nation-states stretching from Senegal to Benin. In Ghana, the country at the leading edge of this extractive front and a harbinger of regional trends, these developments are premised on innovative arrangements of maritime governance. Namely, offshore extraction extends and alters the conventions of territorial rule in maritime space, recasting state authority to fit the distinctive contours of deepwater petrocapital.