Oil ‘futures’: Shell’s Scenarios and the social constitution of the global oil market

Zalik, Anna

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.11.008

Cited by 39 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Financialisation, the process whereby the activities of the financial sector have increased in economic importance over immediately “productive” industry, has significantly shaped the transnational economy in the past half‐century (Arrighi ; Arrighi and Silver ; Lapavistas ; Pike and Pollard ; Strange 1998), particularly in capital‐intensive commodities. Speculative capital's role in shaping new and emerging mineral markets and extractive frontiers has been discussed by scholars from a range of disciplinary specialisations (Labban ; Tsing , ); these markets are advanced in part through the projections of future demand for commodities provided by industrial actors (Zalik ). The ability to access finance makes possible the pursuit of mercantilist strategy in seabed rare‐earth minerals at the ISA.…”

Section: Mercantilism Financialisation and Insurance For Deep Sea MImentioning

confidence: 99%

Mining the seabed, enclosing the Area: ocean grabbing, proprietary knowledge and the geopolitics of the extractive frontier beyond national jurisdiction

Zalik¹

2018

Int Social Sci J

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Over the past 15 years the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the United Nations agency charged with regulating extraction from the ocean floor and seabed in areas beyond national jurisdiction (a zone referred to as the “Area”), has assigned exploration contracts for deep sea mineral exploration for specific zones under its purview. Pressures have mounted in recent years for a rapid roll out of an ISA mineral exploitation regime. Under international law, the deep seabed pertains to the entire global community under the principle of the common heritage of (hu)mankind. Parastatal and private firms granted rights by the UN and/or their home states for exploration prior to the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), are among the actors in these contracts. They include US firms, notably Lockheed Martin, which participated in deep‐sea mining consortia in the 1970s and 1980s. The paper argues that the neo‐mercantilist dynamics surrounding ISA negotiations show how the geopolitics of proprietary data and political economy of finance constitute the deep seabed. The power certain states and firms hold in shaping the ISA exploitation regime arises in part from the contested legal position of ocean frontiers beyond state jurisdiction.

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Section: Mercantilism Financialisation and Insurance For Deep Sea MImentioning

confidence: 99%

Mining the seabed, enclosing the Area: ocean grabbing, proprietary knowledge and the geopolitics of the extractive frontier beyond national jurisdiction

Zalik¹

2018

Int Social Sci J

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“…Only by accounting for the role of financialization in oil trade, Labban argues, can scholars begin to account for increasing oil prices and price volatility since the turn of the millennium. Zalik (2010) explores the active role of strategic business discourse like Shell's Scenarios and International Energy Agency's Outlooks publications, arguing that such documents are crucial in shaping oil markets, including market price. Through their claims, energy actors' perceptions regarding future supply heavily influence trading on commodity exchanges, and "through [their] very expression intervene in the social perceptions that condition speculative markets" (554).…”

Section: Socially Produced Scarcitymentioning

confidence: 99%

From Petro‐States to ‘new realities’: Perspectives on the Geographies of oil

Kennedy

2014

Geography Compass

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Recent “oil shocks” in the form of not only price volatility, but also catastrophic oil spills, growing acceptance of climate change, and public contestations over oil wars and major projects, have multiplied in recent years – indications that the spaces and practices of energy intensive social formations are becoming increasingly politicized objects of concern. The paper summarizes the petro‐state thesis and reviews recent contributions on the geographies of oil. While the petro‐state is useful for conceptualizing some aspects of the political dynamics of oil, it fails to capture some of the dynamics of concern in four major areas of work on geographies of oil: petro‐capitalism and economies of oil violence, socially produced scarcity, petro‐state(s) and expanded oil polities, and the “new realities of oil,” such as price volatility, changes in size and location of demand and supply, and the energy dilemmas associated with energy security and climate change. The conclusion discusses recent work that ties the political geographies of oil to geographies everyday life, pointing to a research agenda for integrating the consideration hydrocarbons into wider geographical inquiries.

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“…In this context, neo‐Malthusian conceptualisations of environmental conflicts indirectly resonate with neoliberal formulations of risk as an opportunity for profit which configure management practices at the heart of responses to scarcity (Dillon ; Zalik ), and which propose a host of techno‐fixes as the royal way towards sustainable societies and lifestyles at a variety of interrelated scales from global to local, all the way down even to bodily experiences and everyday life (see Campbell ; Swyngedouw ). This goes hand in hand with the transformation of politics into ‘ “technological” forms of management or organisation, a process which leads to the effective silencing of genuinely political questions’ (Marchart , 66; see also Nancy ).…”

Section: Securing the Apocalypse: Peak Oil And Post Politicisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the limits of peak oil: naturalising the political, de‐politicising energy

Bettini

Karaliotas

2013

Geographical Journal

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Peak oil has acquired prominence in the political lexicon of an increasing number of critical and radical perspectives during the ongoing ecological and economic crisis. By examining examples within academia as well as initiatives such as the Degrowth Movement and the Transition Network, this paper documents how a series of red‐green discourses and movements mobilise the narrative of peak oil as an alarm bell that signals the inevitability of the present ecological crises and of the coming collapse of the fossil‐fuel economy. The paper, developing an analysis on two levels, argues that the ‘red‐green’ mobilisation of peak oil is problematic. First, a close reading of red‐green discourses shows how the weaknesses of the narrative highlighted in the literature (such as a naturalising and de‐politicising understanding of the materiality and finitude of oil) are reproduced by the red‐greens. Second, building on discourse and political theory, the paper highlights that red‐green interpellations of peak oil fail to transcend hegemonic discursive structurations in the field of environmental and energy security, where geopolitical apocalyptic imaginaries and biopolitical forms of securitisation are linked in reproducing post‐politicisation processes. Hence, the paper insists that the invocation of peak oil forecloses the possibilities for radical alternatives to the present socio‐ecological regime of accumulation and circulation.

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Oil ‘futures’: Shell’s Scenarios and the social constitution of the global oil market

Cited by 39 publications

References 48 publications

Mining the seabed, enclosing the Area: ocean grabbing, proprietary knowledge and the geopolitics of the extractive frontier beyond national jurisdiction

Mining the seabed, enclosing the Area: ocean grabbing, proprietary knowledge and the geopolitics of the extractive frontier beyond national jurisdiction

From Petro‐States to ‘new realities’: Perspectives on the Geographies of oil

Exploring the limits of peak oil: naturalising the political, de‐politicising energy

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