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

Abstract

Abstract. 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.