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The Ethics of Oil: Finance Moralities and Environmental Politics in the Global Oil Economy

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ENERGY ETHICS (The Ethics of Oil: Finance Moralities and Environmental Politics in the Global Oil Economy)

Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2021-12-31

ENERGY ETHICS addresses questions about the conflicting dynamics between finance moralities and environmental politics at a time of oil dependency and an uncertain climate future. What is the value of oil? And how do such valuations, understood as both financial and ethical, intersect and inform the making of the global oil economy? To what extent can oil be an important industrial resource, a profit-yielding investment opportunity and an undesired pollutant that brings about irreversible climate impacts? Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork with oil companies in Colorado, Norway and Ghana, energy analysts in Texas, and fossil fuel divestment activists in the UK, ENERGY ETHICS develops a new framework for understanding the relationship between oil, money and climate change that counters the prevalent tendency to interpret these issues through aggregated normative systemic analysis only. Taking its starting point in people’s own perceptions of and direct involvement in the oil economy, it enables us to understand how people in positions of influence within the oil economy make financial and ethical valuations of oil. This will contribute to public stakeholder dialogue and wider inter disciplinary engagements.
Year 1: PI created website, set up fieldwork arrangements for the research team and carried out short but intense fieldwork trips to Colorado. PI recruited PhD1 to start Sep 2017 and PhD2 to start Jan 2018. PhDs1 and 2 undertook training which included fieldwork methods, ethics, language training (PhD1 only), proposal development and initial field site visits. PI met with PhDs1 and 2 regularly and frequently with focussed one-on-one supervisions with submitted written work every month, in addition to other meetings.

Year 2: PI continued fieldwork trips to Colorado and the supervision of PhDs1 and 2. PhD1 began fieldwork with Equinor and other oil companies in Norway in Aug 2018 (as per Description of the action). PI recruited Postdoc1 to start Sep 2018. PhD2 began fieldwork with divestment activists in the UK in Nov 2018 (slightly delayed start date of PhD led to slightly delayed start date of fieldwork. However, PhD2 is on time in relation to her PhD start date. No delay). PI visited PhD1 during her fieldwork and maintained close supervision of fieldwork progress through field reports and Skype meetings. In Jan 2019 Postdoc1 started fieldwork with energy analysts and oil financiers in Houston. PI has maintained close contact with Postdoc1 during fieldwork and made a field visit in July 2019. PI recruited Postdoc2 to start in April 2019. In June 2019 Postdoc2 began fieldwork with oil companies in Ghana and PI has maintained close contact through field reports and Skype meetings.

Year 3: PhD2 returned from fieldwork in January 2020 and Postdoc1 returned from fieldwork in February 2020. PI, PhD2 and Postdoc1 now meet regularly for the ENERGY ETHICS writing-up seminars. The PI plans to visit Postdoc2 in the field in May 2020. PhD1, Postdoc1 and PI are organising the first major project event, which will take place 1-2 April 2020.
ENERGY ETHICS has successfully developed a novel methodology for data gathering and implemented an innovative inter disciplinary framework that unites the global problem of climate change with its local agents. Bringing close ethnographic investigation to bear on existing conceptions of oil markets, ENERGY ETHICS is providing much-needed beyond the state of the art empirical insights that will deepen our understanding of oil’s multiple and conflicting valuations.