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

Kärg Kama

doi:10.1177/0309132519829223

Abstract

Advancing relational accounts of ‘resource-making’ processes by deploying insights from science and technology studies, this article outlines crucial new lines of inquiry for geographical research on unconventional fossil fuels. The exploitation of various carbon-rich substitutes for hydrocarbons has rapidly expanded over the last two decades, to become a highly contentious issue which augments scientific dissensus and generates new collective engagements with the subsurface. The article invites geographers to examine the epistemically and politically transformative potential of such resource-making controversies in terms of reconfiguring: the production of geoscientific knowledge, anticipation of post-conventional energy systems, and temporal strategies of (de)economizing extractive futures.

Highlights

In response to resurgent concerns about resource scarcity and energy insecurity, the last two decades have seen rapid expansion in the development of alternative, so-called ‘unconventional’ fossil fuel resources, including lower grade and hard-to-access oil and gas extracted from shale basins and bituminous sands
The unprecedented rate and scale at which unconventional sources have begun to substitute for traditional fossil fuels offers a timely reminder of the longstanding tenet in geography and cognate disciplines that resources are not self-evident or static ‘natural’ entities
In line with growing efforts to move beyond established political economy and political ecology questions of ‘resource-claiming’, I contend that we need to critically examine how heterogeneous geological substances are rendered into knowable and exploitable resources in the first place, or ‘resource-making’ (Ferry and Limbert, 2008; Bridge, 2011b; Kama, 2013; Li, 2014; Richardson and Weszkalnys, 2014)

Summary

Introduction

While continued reliance on conventional fossil fuels is increasingly questioned in light of the degrading resource base and adverse effects on the climate, their replacement with carbon-rich alternatives is even more contentious, not least due to higher investment costs and lower energy returns, difficulties with transferring existing technological solutions to geophysically and geoeconomically distant locations, and profound uncertainties over both the environmental risks and socio-economic benefits of extraction. Rather than awaiting discovery as higher-quality stocks become difficult to access, unconventional fossil fuels need to be qualified as worthy of exploitation through targeted geological prospecting and techno-scientific experiments, established as preferable sources of supply in the realm of energy policy and markets, and, extracted, transported and refined into materials suitable for actual consumption None of these interventions are straightforward: their implementation is subject to conflicting and disputed strategies among both industry experts and associated regulators and stakeholders, especially concerning the take-up of the technology of hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ across the sector. My aim is not so much to offer a comprehensive review of recent publications, but to outline new analytical trajectories for exploring the epistemically and politically redistributive effects of resource-making controversies, and their complex engagements with matter and time

The ‘unconventional’: Resourcemaking as ontological politics

Geo-social controversies

Anticipatory politics

Economization

Conclusions