ABSTRACT
From the Labour-led government’s High North Strategy from 2006 to the current government’s Arctic Policy launched in early 2017, nearly every future vision of the Norwegian North includes oil and gas as drivers of growth. Whilst much attention within the social sciences is paid to the geopolitical level, this study pays closer attention to how such projected futures affect local dynamics and people’s lives in the north.
This chapter seeks to highlight how the promises of petroleum-driven growth interweaves with people’s perception and narratives within the region where the development takes place. In the city of Hammerfest, the industry has been a boost for the local economy, job market and tax income, and there is generally a high level of social acceptance. Debates about climate change, indigenous concerns and other grounds for dissent are mainly cast as either “outside voices” or anti-developmental – thus strengthening the image of positive “ripple effects” and expanding infrastructure.
Yet with the fall in oil prices in recent years, oil companies cut costs and plan for offshore developments that leave local content less certain in other municipalities in the north. As a result, a new dynamic between local, national and industry players is coming to the fore. By attending to these controversies, this chapter builds on ethnographic fieldwork to discuss how certain rights and interests are pushed to the front and others left out of view in preparing and building northern energy futures.
