Mental Oil Spills in Norway’s Oil Capital

Oil is everywhere in Stavanger—highly visible, and yet also out of sight. In this episode of Challenging Nordic Innocence, we’re joined by Bjørk Tørnqvist to talk about “mental oil spills” and the petro-hegemonies shaping Norway’s oil capital. Drawing on participatory mapping, the conversation explores how petroleum is not just an industry or export, but something that structures everyday life—organising space, funding welfare, and making certain dependencies feel natural, even inevitable. What emerges is a closer look at how oil is lived with, normalised, and built into the fabric of the city of Stavanger itself…and what produces an impasse when it comes to imagine non-petroleum futures in Stavanger.

 

Bjørk Tørnqvist is a PhD fellow at Roskilde University in Denmark where she is working on a research project examining the political economy of rare earth minerals extraction in South Greenland. In broad terms, the objective of Bjørk’s is to contribute to an understanding of the politics of value that are embedded in REE mining processes, and the ways in which these values are tied to local, national, and global interests. I do this by studying two cases in South Greenland: the proposed Kuannersuit mine and the proposed Killavaat Alannguat mine. 
Value construction is here seen as political, because different value ideas hold different assumptions about power, as well as who should benefit and how. My research focuses on how, if at all, the local population wishes to benefit from mining operations, and which ideas of value (social, cultural, economic) they attach to the mines. I also explore the structure and organizational design of extractive companies, and their interactions with geopolitical tensions, international and national guidelines, as well as compliances with local consultations and inclusion mechanisms.