When I worked on my postdoc research proposal a few years ago, I thought it would be easy to make the Bruneian petroculture stand out from those in the Global North that were dominating discussions in the energy humanities.
Most of those studies focused on the social, political, environmental and climate injustices enacted by the powerful few in the Global North and paid for disproportionately by vulnerable communities in the Global South. They focused on the dispossession of, and violence towards, people and land that extraction and extractivist practices impacted. These studies necessarily highlighted the devastating consequences of the current fossil energy regime, particularly in light of pressing climate change issues.
At the time, I felt strongly that Brunei’s oil story stands in stark contrast to the picture painted by these studies. We were exceptional – about 70-80% of the land is covered by untouched forest, GHG emissions were only 0.03% of the total amount worldwide, we’re pretty stable politically, and economically we weren’t doing so bad. Compared to other “resource-cursed” oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria (whose abundant natural resources inhibited or degraded economic growth and/or political stability) there were studies that showed that Brunei shouldn’t be lumped in the same category.
So I wrote my proposal from this point of view to justify why the project needed to be done. I got the grant.
Fast forward a few months later, in the thick of seminars and conference with fellow petrocultural scholars in Norway, I was hit with the realisation that I had been completely bamboozled.
Because ALL of us thought we were exceptional. Scholars from Norway were impassioned about their work because of the oljeeventyr, the oil fairytale that provided them with perhaps the most envied sovereign wealth fund in the entire world. Scholars from Canada were convinced their work was unique because of the massive Alberta tar sands and the embeddedness of oil in their national identity. Venezuelan scholars were convinced their petroculture was distinct because they had the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
In other words, we were each working from the same conviction that our own petroculture was the exception and therefore worth studying (and funding).
Coming to this realisation wasn’t easy because I think each of us became slightly disillusioned for a little bit: if this oil story isn’t exceptional, then why bother?
But to think this way is to give in to the oil narrative that serves the interests of Big Oil. Because the notion of oil exceptionalism is one that’s to a large extent cultivated by multinational oil corporations in the first place. By skilfully intertwining their (our) product – oil – with national identity, they ensure the longevity of their business through long-term support of the people.
I’ve written about how this happens in ‘The Making of a Petro-Citizen‘, where art galleries and museums are funded by oil companies and petroaesthetic landscapes tie oil to national identity and local culture. Cumulatively, they endow oil with a sense of being exceptional to that nation.
If we were to start valuing our research from the point of view of how unique the subject is, then we’d be missing the point. We’d be buying into Big Oil’s tactics, using their framework and definition of what matters versus those of the people whose lives are affected by these built systems.
Oil exceptionalism as manufactured by Big Oil in reality flattens the distinct traits of each country by shifting their “energy” and their “heritage” onto their oil identities. In my earlier description of what I thought made the Brunei oil story distinct, I was simply regurgitating the narrative that Big Oil promoted. (The 0.03% value and unit of measurement for GHGs was, ironically, iterated by one of the co-chairs of the National Council of Climate Change) Many of the points made are arguable. For instance, when we alter total GHG emissions to per capita or per person, the number shoots up exponentially, rocketing Brunei’s position up to second place after Qatar as biggest emitters in the world. As for the resource curse, if we only look at politics and economic development when comparing Brunei’s current condition to how it was before oil, the results would certainly show that we’ve managed to avoid the affliction. But if we take into account social changes, cultural degradation, loss of traditional ecological knowledges, and rate of unemployment, the picture changes drastically.
So while oil exceptionalism as produced by Big Oil might be an illusion, the reality of it is that oil exceptionalism as seen through the eyes of the people very much exists. Oil exceptionalism is felt in the very tangible social, political and cultural infrastructures that make up the lived experiences of the citizens. And these systems and structures will vary from place to place and experienced differently from person to person even within the same national boundary. Just ask a boomer in Brunei how they feel about oil versus how a Gen Z-er feels about their oil heritage. Poles apart.
And that in itself is worth studying. The awareness of Big Oil’s role in perpetuating oil exceptionalism across all all nations is important. But that doesn’t mean that we should ignore individual and community perspectives and experiences of oil.
Petro-Ambiguity: Environment, Energy, Culture 
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