THE FOOTPRINT OF OIL ECONOMY

THE FOOTPRINT OF OIL ECONOMY is now part of a disappearing landscape in our field of research. This state of transition is both local, national and global. A new economic landscape is appearing.
When Alice Labadini and I visited Jæren and the new large landslide of a private harbour out in the seascape, it was filled with firms from all over the (oil) world. Haliburton was there, as in Iraq.
The amalgam of international firms in Stavanger is not to bee seen anywhere else in Norway. We discovered the secrecy of this by being prohibited to photograph the large Connoco/Phillips office building in this new harbour area. A research question in our encircling on Jæren is the force and magnitude of this disappearing activities and landscapes. This can be of a very dramatic character.
A cartography of Jæren today has still to contain an enormous seascape, with the oilfields, platforms, pipelines etc. This is certainly in a state of disappearing.

I wrote this little text, some time ago, as part of an invitation to the journalist Ingunn Økland to write herself into our research.

Our Canadian architect friend Kelly Doran send us this images of the agressivenes, a new appearance of the global oil companies in Alberta, hunting for oil sand. This smart diagrams and undeniable arguments are part of a larger research he is doing on the Canadian governments attitudes towards sustainability. Diagrams to learn from in our research on Jæren, don’t you think?

Kellys own comments goes like this:
“Here they are....basically, the GIS information from the Province is the source data for the Lease holds and sizes. I then just took a map of Europe and scaled it to compare areas. Feel free to use them how ever you wish.
Moral of the story; given how poorly Canada showed at Copenhagen, it would seem pretty obvious that a host of foreign nations have vested interests in the Oil Sands.
This list could continue to include of course the Americans, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans”.

I think you will meet with Kelly at AHO during our first session or theme, Encircling the Field, that goes for the two first weeks of our studio.

KED