Understanding Arctic oil and gas: entanglements of gender, emotions and environment

The Arctic imaginary is often characterized by white snow, empty vastness – and extensive natural resources. The topic of oil and gas, in the Arctic or elsewhere, is becoming increasingly important, as our planet is warming. However, while attention to the global climate crisis, alongside environmental awareness, has accelerated, the extraction of hydrocarbons is still a reality in many Arctic nations. The tentacles of the industry are widespread: besides benefitting the nation states and companies working with oil and gas, the fossil fuel production is meaningful also for the local communities, the seabed and the animals of the North. The issues of energy, fossil fuels, and climate change in the Arctic are widely discussed, researched, and debated. However, the topic is usually approached with a focus on the economic, to some extent environmental, and increasingly nationalist narratives, while the social aspects of energy production are left invisible.

This dissertation focuses on notions seldomly connected to the discussion on northern hydrocarbons: gender and emotions. In order to move beyond fossil fuels and achieve a just and sustainable energy transition, we must evaluate the different dimensions embedded within fossil fuel dependency. Against this backdrop, in this work I ask; 1) How is the social world of fossil fuels constructed? 2) How does paying attention to emotions and affects help to understand resource politics in the Arctic? and 3) How is the practice of the fossil fuel industry gendered? This dissertation consists of four peer-reviewed articles and a concluding synthesis. In the articles, I look at different levels and views of the northern fossil fuel world, focusing especially on Norwegian and Russian fossil fuel spheres. My underlying approach to the topic emerges from the literature and discussions of feminist international relations, woven together with critical ideas of the Arctic. I explore a variety of material produced by the oil and gas companies operating in the Arctic, interviews conducted with local people living in the neighbourhood where production takes place, and national Arctic strategies, in order to gather a wide understanding of the issue. The material consists of both textual and visual vocabulary. I analyse the chosen material with different methods suitable for each individual research using a justification analysis, narrative analysis, visual analysis and thematic content analysis.

In this dissertation, I demonstrate how gender and emotions are entangled with the northern fossil fuel industry. In order to comprehend the continuation (and justification) of the industry, in an era defined by the climate crisis, we must pay attention to the gendered and affective logics around it. This work conveys that to justify the ongoing operations in the Arctic, the fossil fuel companies emphasize aspects based on narratives that have historically been associated with masculine practices and conceptions. The way women are represented guides the image the fossil fuel companies wish to portray themselves, and through this, shape the narrative of the northern fossil fuel world. In addition, this work illustrates the ways in which emotions and affects matter not only in the individual experiences of the oil and gas industry, but also in how they are utilized to construct elusive imaginaries of the future of the industry. Emotions and affects can be created and utilized to legitimize certain (national) resource politics by enforcing particular affective states. The research suggests that emotions and gender shape not only our way of understanding the phenomenon, but also how the phenomenon itself – in this case, the northern fossil fuel dependency – is created and sustained.