Unconventional fossil fuels and technological change

Resource-making controversies: Knowledge, anticipatory politics and economization of unconventional fossil fuels

“…Thus, even though ‘unconventional’ has now come to serve as a common denominator for all kinds of fossil energy substitutes, it is crucial to bear in mind that these do not amount to a uniform resource category or even a similar socio-historical phenomenon. Quite the contrary, their exploration spans distinct technological histories and political-economic experiments aimed at self-sufficient energy provisioning, which in the case of bitumen and oil shales reach back more than a hundred years, to the very beginning of the ‘oil era’ (see Yergin, 2009: 7, 178), while shale gas and tight oil development is more recent, having largely taken off in wake of the 1970s energy crises (Bradshaw et al, 2015a; Stevens, 2010). The recurrent consideration of such fossil fuels in state energy policies is thus characteristic of attempts to render ‘vertical territory’ subject to the building of national identity and sovereignty (Braun, 2000; Elden, 2013).…”

“…Unconventionals, like any hydrocarbons, are always ‘inserted into a very specific localized […] political economy even if the properties of the wider oil assemblage are in some sense normalized’ (Watts, 2013: 1018). For example, the exploitation of extra-heavy crudes in Venezuela and oil shales in Estonia, Brazil and China is inextricably entangled with nationalist energy policies and cross-subsidized by other heavy industry, to the extent that their operations are at odds with free market imperatives (Bradshaw et al, 2015a; Kama, 2013). Whilst being in no way immune to developments in the ‘oil assemblage’ and fluctuations in global prices, these industries remain chiefly local achievements and, as such, prove difficult to replicate elsewhere.…”

“…Critical research in this field comprises political ecology analyses of local environmental hazards, social inequalities and grassroots resistance associated with expansive extraction (e.g. Christopherson and Rightor, 2014;Willow and Wylie, 2014;Zalik, 2015b), as well as political economy accounts of its implications for global energy markets (Bradshaw et al, 2015a(Bradshaw et al, , 2015bNeville et al, 2017). The allocation of swathes of land for fracking, in particular, is often seen as an extension of neoliberal appropriation of nature, which engulfs local communities while sustaining the order of the carbon-fuelled capitalist economy (Fry et al, 2015;Hudgins and Poole, 2014;Mercer et al, 2014).…”

“… 1. In technical literature, these are often depicted as a continuum of fossil fuels with decreasing recovery potential and energy returns, ranging from crude oils with higher API gravity and conventional natural gas to less viscous or permeable sources such as bitumen and shale-based hydrocarbons, to kerogen-rich oil shales and gas hydrates (see Bradshaw et al, 2015a). There are other geo-energy resources which do not fit this categorization, such as geothermal energy. …”