Barents Studies: Peoples, Economies and Politics (Oct 2018)
At the margins of the Barents energyscape
Abstract
In political, popular, and scholarly debates, the Arctic – and most importantly within it the Barents region – is portrayed as being on the brink of becoming the “world’s new energy province”. Growth in global energy demand, dwindling reserves, political instabilities at existing production sites, warming climate, as well as advancements in extraction and transportation technologies are pushing energy activities further towards the previously inaccessible north. In these framings, energy in the Arctic is mostly understood as synonymous with oil and gas production for international exports and as a concern of markets and politics, and of technology, science, and economics. Exploring media representations of the regional energyscape through the “theorymethods package” (Clarke 2015, 87) of situational analysis, this article highlights the diversity of regional energy beyond oil and gas production; the simplistic manners in which the societal dimensions of energy are understood; the absence of everyday life, ordinary people, and the female gender from the depictions of the regional energyscape; and the lack of attention to climate impacts of northern energy production.
