Geology, Potentiality, Speculation: On the Indeterminacy of First Oil

Abstract

This article uses what the petroleum industry calls first oil to examine the uneven process of resource making on the margins of global zones of extraction. It explores how the double obscurity of hydrocarbon prospects—both geologically obscured and their worth not yet revealed by the market—generates particular material constraints, pauses, and setbacks characteristic of petroleum production. The article draws on ethnographic and archival material from São Tomé and Príncipe (STP), where repeated attempts to explore offshore oil have yet to transform geological potential into an economic asset. It highlights the incongruous effects of certain epistemic practices and devices (contract, zone, and well) aimed at facilitating first oil by managing uncertainty. As a result, they work as gestures of an indeterminate matter whose existence continues to be doubted.

Mining Leftovers: Making Futures on the Margins of Capitalism

“…Thus, small‐scale gold extraction always remains immersed in global economic logics. Recent works on modern time (Bear 2014) and potentiality (Weszkalnys 2015) in capitalism have shown how, through speculation, economies incorporate pause and delay, which were formerly deemed as largely detrimental to growth but are, in fact, central to practices of value making that affect the most vulnerable populations and landscapes. Local communities live in equally heterogeneous times and potentialities (Bear 2014).…”

Anxiety and cosmopolitan futures: Brexit and Scotland

“…As an observation of potentiality, speculation—the forming of a conjecture without firm evidence—offers a mode of participation in the future that may be facilitated or curtailed by Brexit. Speculation goes along with a distinctive temporal disposition toward creatively contemplating some possibilities while excluding others (Weszkalnys , 623). Speculation from the present as to what both the Brexit and the Trumpocene future might hold often pushes us into unknown realms on topics of warfare, financial trading, and climate change.…”

Shelf Projects: The Political Life of Exploration Geology in Senegal

“…Some gold exploration teams employ more local labor than extractive firms, which supplant labor with high-tech machinery. This article joins a small, but growing, literature interested in how the protracted phase of exploration geology shapes the politics and economics of mining (Luning 2014;Luning and Pijpers 2017;Weszkalnys 2015).…”

“…Ethnographies of exploration geology in Canada, Ecuador, and Principe and Sao Tome document the discursive techniques (Kneas 2016;Ozden-Schilling, m.s. ) and physical "gestures" (Weszkalnys 2015) used by exploration companies to communicate the potential value of the underground to investors. Drawing on insights from literature on the performativity of markets and the sciences of calculability (Mackenzie 2009;Mackenzie et al, 2012;Monika, Goodwin, and Mesman 2010), these studies reveal that minerals do not exist, a priori, as valuable commodities.…”