Carbon capital: The lexicon and allegories of US hydrocarbon finance

Field, Sean L.

doi:10.1080/03085147.2022.2030606

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…5 "Upstream" refers to oil and gas exploration and production. 6 See Field (2022b) for a full exploration of the valuation methods used by oil and gas financiers and experts in the US oil and gas industry. 7 Throughout the article I use the Penguin edition of Capital cited in the bibliography.…”

Section: Funding Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Then I asked Tom how the industry is changing and how calls to address climate change impact him and others. Reflecting, first, on the state of the US hydrocarbon industry in late 2019, he explained how "markets rewarded companies on the basis of how much acreage you control," describing a phase of the US "shale revolution," when investors clamored to buy proven but not yet producing unconventional oil and gas reserves (see Field, 2022aField, , 2022b In this phase, companies' worth was equated to the "net asset value" of their future expected hydrocarbon production. He continued, "The investment community equated acreage to value.…”

Section: Tom's Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We're now equating free‐cash‐flow positive … to value’” (October 24, 2019). Lamenting the shift from expansive “growth” to capital “discipline” in the sector, he talked about the “reserve value” of subterranean oil and gas deposits and shifts in what “the investment community values.” By this, he did not mean that investors fundamentally shifted away from normative economic notions of value but rather that there was a shift in where investors saw potential opportunities to generate value in the form of profits within the hydrocarbon industry (Field, 2022a, 2022b).…”

Section: Tom's Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 6 See Field (2022b) for a full exploration of the valuation methods used by oil and gas financiers and experts in the US oil and gas industry. …”

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Value as ethics: Climate change, crisis, and the struggle for the future

Field¹

2023

Economic Anthropology

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Drawing on ethnographic research in Houston, Texas, I contribute novel ethnographic insights into how oil and gas experts understand notions of value. I show that prevailing notions of value are normatively defined in economic terms and closely tied to understandings of an American “way of life.” Questions of value, I suggest, reveal our idiosyncratic and shared ethical orientations toward what we think is important and the futures we are fighting to create. The climate crisis, as such, is not a crisis of emissions or hydrocarbons but a crisis of how value is assigned to worldly things. I conclude by arguing that until we address questions of value, we are unlikely to address the existential crisis of anthropogenic climate change.

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Section: Funding Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tom's Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tom's Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

“…6 6 See Field (2022b) for a full exploration of the valuation methods used by oil and gas financiers and experts in the US oil and gas industry. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Value as ethics: Climate change, crisis, and the struggle for the future

Field¹

2023

Economic Anthropology

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“…It is, in industry terms, a ‘highly prospective’ resource, meaning private companies have yet to ‘prove up’ its contents into ‘reserves’. In publicly staging its potential, proponents have not focused on factors that actually determine production feasibility – namely the price of bringing the resource to market (Field, 2022) – but instead broadcast employment and revenue estimates from maximised development scenarios. This was illustrated during a 2021 Senate inquiry conducted by the Australian Federal government, when a gas developer, national gas lobby, and the federal department of energy all quoted from the same private consulting report, claiming that ‘over 6,000 jobs’ and ‘as much as $17 billion’ in economic value could come from the field (APPEA, 2021, p. 2; Empire Energy, 2021, p. 2).…”

Section: Fostering An Old Frontiermentioning

confidence: 99%

Converging old and new carbon frontiers in northern Australia

Neale

Dahlgren

Howey³

et al. 2023

Area

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Over the past 15 years, international climate policy and governance practice have shifted from a linear model of carbon emissions management to a circular model. Whereas the former primarily focused on reducing absolute emissions, the latter focuses on balancing emissions sources and sinks. Australia, a major global exporter of ‘old’ carbon resources such as coal, has actively embraced circular carbon policies and their related ‘new’ carbon resources such as carbon credits. Focusing on Australia's Northern Territory as a site of old and new carbon economies, where government administrators have actively sought to host carbon circulations and loops, this paper examines three interlinked cases to illustrate the interdependencies generated through circular carbon policies. Identifying how sources, sinks, and the mediation of relations between them all constitute key contemporary carbon frontiers, we conclude by calling for a research agenda that analyses ‘old’ and ‘new’ carbon economies as a co‐produced assemblage rather than as isolated zones.

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Carbonous Concealment: Governing “Wild” Substances and Subterranean Storage in an Era of Climate Change

Field

2024

Antipode

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Drawing on ethnographic field research that I conducted in Houston, Texas since late 2018, I explore subterranean storage arrangements utilised by the US hydrocarbon industry. I argue that storage is vital not only to its pluri‐temporal strategies but to the outward projection of good governance. Natural gas, I show, has evolved from excess nuisance, to liability, to potential asset turned commodity in ways that parallel unfolding understandings and treatments of carbon dioxide. Governance and subterranean carbonous storage arrangements, I argue, are tied to the materiality of liquid versus gaseous hydrocarbons and to how understandings of this materiality have changed. Paying attention to what these storage spaces mean and to whom can lend insights into why storage is utilised and to what effect.

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Carbon capital: The lexicon and allegories of US hydrocarbon finance

Cited by 6 publications

References 52 publications

Value as ethics: Climate change, crisis, and the struggle for the future

Value as ethics: Climate change, crisis, and the struggle for the future

Converging old and new carbon frontiers in northern Australia

Carbonous Concealment: Governing “Wild” Substances and Subterranean Storage in an Era of Climate Change

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