Canada's oil sands: The mark of a new ‘oil age’ or a potential threat to Arctic security?

Abstract

For more than a decade, nation states globally have been actively engaged in the exploration of unconventional fuel sources such as tight oil, shale gas and coal bed methane. As technology has developed over time, these newer sources of hydrocarbon, once thought economically nonviable, are now offering renewed hope for increased energy security. In Canada, while deposits of shale gas are in development, it is, however, the nation's oil sands that are proving most lucrative. Located in the province of Alberta, oil sands are being touted as the means to make Canada ‘an emerging energy superpower’. While this geopolitical posturing and plans for pipelines through Canada's Arctic North are being welcomed by some, others fear the heavy toll oil sands extraction will make on the environment. In addressing these arguments, this paper tells two stories: one of the development of oil sands through the lens of the peak oil/scarcity debate and the other, of the narratives being utilised by the Canadian government to create a nexus between nation building and securing its Arctic spaces. Both essentially suggest that it is the same factors regionally and globally that are pursuing an agenda where ‘liquid modernity’ has become a reality (Bauman, 2000).