ABSTRACT
Oil is central to contemporary societies, and the liquid nature of oil is key to the liquid nature of twentieth/twenty-first-century life. This chapter demonstrates that oil itself is on the move in many complex ways that mirror this liquid modernity. The chapter focuses on the literal paths like dirt tracks, tanker routes, pipelines, highways - that the movement of oil both presupposes and produces. We begin by outlining some key features of fossil energy-based systems. The chapter demonstrates that the ways in which energy moves is not just a matter of technical interest. Energy mobilities and immobilities have played and continue to play a central role in the fuelling of social, economic, political and geopolitical struggles and settlements. The chapter then documents some important shifts that have occurred in the system of oil distribution relating to the increasingly stark geographical imbalances between oil supply and demand, and the new possibilities for disruption this portends.
