While energy use has appeared historically consequent for most of human history, it now seems energy non-use may determine our future. It is clear that the worst effects of climate change can only be averted if vast quantities of fossil fuels go unburnt.
This paper traces the history of oil being reined in by the British Raj, from the 1870s to the early 20th C. I argue that oil is not a self-evident object, but a category built by regimes of thought.
The major challenge to research on hydrocarbon history is the accessibility of archival sources. Among other factors, the restricted access to corporate records has limited the field of exploration of the discipline so far.
When oil was found in water depths larger than 150 meters in the North Sea in the 1970s, a new and revolutionary concept was needed to be able to support deck structures for production of petroleum.
Antoine Missemer, Les économistes et la fin des énergies fossiles (1865-1931) [Economists and the End of Fossil Fuels] (Paris : Garnier, 2017)
Roberto Cantoni, Oil exploration, Diplomacy, and Security in the Early Cold War: The Enemy Underground (New York: Routledge, 2017)
Katayoun Shafiee, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018).
At its birth in 1924 the French state endowed the Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP) with a quarter share of the Turkish (later Iraq) Petroleum Company. A joint venture between the big four American and British oil companies, IPC struck oil in Iraq three years later.
Astrid Kander, Paolo Malanima and Paul Warde, Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013)
Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London: Verso, 2011)