Time for oil: competing petrotemporalities in Norway's Lofote/Vesteralen/Senja Archipelago

Abstract

This chapter analyses how the petroleum industry operates across multiple temporal frames. The authors then go on to illustrate how, when communities debate their petroleum futures, the “anticipatory temporalities” of petroleum abundance, technology, price, and demand are contrasted with alternate temporalities that, in many cases, fail to align with those articulated by the oil industry. Through a reflection on historic and ongoing debates over offshore oil production in Norway’s Lofoten/Vesterålen/Senja (LoVeSe) region, they propose that debates over petroleum futures are not simply about struggles over shared space, exemplified in ‘oil vs community,’ ‘oil vs fisheries,’ or ‘oil vs environment’ narratives; they are also debates about the intersections and alignments of different temporalities and the meaning and significance of time.