Collaborative Research: The Ends of Oil: Changing Life in Earth Science, Extractive Industry and Indigenous Communities in Alaska

University Of Oklahoma Norman Campus, Norman OK

Investigators

Abstract

How does oil as a resource and social and economic force end? And what comes next? In Alaska, these are some of the most pressing questions for northern communities facing dwindling dividends, aging pipelines, and eroding coastlines. This exploratory research project will examine how a variety of stakeholders - earth scientists, oil companies, state policy-makers, and Alaska Native peoples - are each responding to the fiscal, infrastructural, environmental, and cosmological ends of oil in Alaska and envisioning how life might carry on afterwards. The aim of this proposed EAGER research is to make contact with these stakeholders, survey their engagements with the issue, visit field sites, and identify partners in order to better craft a collaborative, multi-sited research project on the ends of oil in northern Alaska. EAGER support will enable this exploratory research to incorporate local concerns into the design and implementation of a larger research project on "the Ends of Oil in Alaska."