Resource sterilization: reserve replacement, financial risk, and environmental review in Canada's tar sands

Pivoting on the process of reserve replacement undertaken by key oil transnationals in Canada as a spatial fix for capital, the article considers how individual firms employ formal review processes to project their strategic interests. The proponent firm shapes, through its own participation, the re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEnvironment and planning. A Vol. 47; no. 12; pp. 2446 - 2464
Main Author Zalik, Anna
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2015
Subjects
Canada
Native North Americans
Oil fields
Oil reserves
Transnationalism
Canada, Alberta
reserve replacement
Canada
climate advocacy
Shell
capitalist contradictions
spatial fix
oil
environmental review
spatial and socio-ecological fix
tar sands
value
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Summary:Pivoting on the process of reserve replacement undertaken by key oil transnationals in Canada as a spatial fix for capital, the article considers how individual firms employ formal review processes to project their strategic interests. The proponent firm shapes, through its own participation, the regulatory terrain on which competitors will subsequently operate. In Alberta's tar sands, the oil industry's reserve replacement process serves as a spatial–temporal fix for capital, and the review process and tribunal acts as a complementary socio-ecological fix – restricting social/affective claims, including First Nations resistance, to an official tribunal setting. In seeking formal approval to replace declining oil and gas reserves with unconventionals, proponent firms claim investor security, while social movement opponents emphasize risk and insecurity arising from carbon-intensive, frontier extraction. In the case of the contested Shell Jackpine Mine Expansion Joint Review Panel, as in other environmental assessment processes in Alberta, the proponent firm and state representatives employ the oxymoronic term ‘resource sterilization’ to describe ecological protection. ‘Resource sterilization’ offers a discursive representation of how capital's spatio-temporal fix in unconventionals is facilitated through the terms of the formal review process, in which social claims are muted.
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ISSN:0308-518X
1472-3409
DOI:10.1177/0308518X15609218