The Petro-state Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago
Abstract: The Petro-State Masquerade considers how postcolonial political futures in the Caribbean nation-state of Trinidad and Tobago came to be staked to the market futures of oil, natural gas, and their petrochemical derivatives. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, Jobson theorizes how the tenuous relationship between oil and political power鈥攅nshrined in the hyphenated form of the petro-state鈥攊s represented by postcolonial state officials as a Carnivalesque 鈥渕asquerade of permanence鈥� through the perpetual expansion of fossil fuel ventures. At the same time, low oil and gas prices, diminishing reserves, and renewable energy innovations threaten the viability of the Trinbagonian energy sector.
Since 1998, multinational oil and gas investments in Trinidad have increasingly concentrated in the deepwater sector. Characterized by protracted production cycles, deepwater ventures feature prohibitive costs and a comparatively low probability of success. After several deepwater ventures failed to yield substantive commercial quantities of oil or gas, the unfulfilled potential of a lucrative offshore geology is invoked to mitigate uncertainty and secure the long-term viability of the Trinbagonian energy sector. In their masquerade, state officials depict fossil fuels as inexhaustible resources waiting to be unearthed by multinational capital and novel extractive technologies.
Sponsored by: the 五月天视频Harper Lecture Fund (Dean of Faculty鈥檚 Office), 五月天视频Anthropology, 五月天视频Latin American Studies (History), and Pomona Environmental Analysis.