The oil and gas geologist’s Arctic in the age of the Anthropocene - knowledge, politics and imaginative geologies ...

• Main Author: Bartels, Marianne Pascale
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: The University of St Andrews 2024
• Subjects: Arctic; Oil and gas resources; Knowledge production; Anthropocene; Climate change
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17630/sta/1161; https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/30914

This dissertation is about how geologists produce Arctic oil and gas estimate knowledge and think about what they do at a time of profound environmental and climate change (often dubbed the Anthropocene). Accordingly, the study considers how geological knowledge is produced, for what purpose and with what effects, and how geologists, chiefly in government but also in academia and industry, see themselves and their role in changing energy landscapes. Geologists are much neglected agents in contemporary energy and climate dynamics and yet are crucial to how the present and future are envisioned and represented. The originality of the study lies in its attempt to probe the geological data on Arctic oil and gas estimation and develop an insider-outsider approach to engaging with geologists that is based on a close textual examination of 23 semi-structured interviews (from a larger total of 42 conducted for the study). This involved the investigator working (‘shuttling’) between geological and geographical ...