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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">Petro-State Masquerade: Oil and Sovereignty in Trinidad and Tobago</span></u></b><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">Monday, September 19, 2022<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">4:00pm-5:30pm<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium"><a href="https://whereis.mit.edu/?go=14">14S-130</a>*<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="04xlpa" style="line-height:19.5pt"><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">*<b>Individuals who do not have an MIT ID must RSVP by Friday, Sept. 16, 12pm to be registered for campus access via Tim Tickets. Please email
<a href="mailto:sts-events@mit.edu" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext;text-decoration:none">sts-events@mit.edu</span></a>.</b>*</span><span style="color:#545454"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">SPEAKER:</span></i><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium"> </span><span class="apple-tab-span"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">Ryan Jobson</span></b><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">, University of Chicago</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Avenir-Medium">The "Petro-State Masquerade'' considers how postcolonial political futures in the Caribbean nation state of Trinidad and Tobago came to be staked to the market futures of oil, natural gas, and their
petrochemical derivatives. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this paper theorizes how the tenuous relationship between oil and political power-enshrined in the hyphenated form of the petro-state is represented by postcolonial state officials as
a Carnivalesque ''masquerade of permanence'' through the perpetual expansion of fossil fuel ventures. At the same time, low oil, and gas prices, diminishing reserves, and renewable energy innovations threaten the viability of the Trinbagonian energy sector.
In turn, this paper examines the turn to offshore exploration in the deepwater sector beginning in 1998. Characterized by protracted production cycles, deepwater ventures feature prohibitive costs and a comparatively low probability of success. After several
deepwater ventures failed to yield substantive commercial quantities of oil or gas, the unfulfilled potential of a lucrative offshore geology is invoked to mitigate uncertainty and secure the long-term viability of the Trinbagonian energy sector. In their
masquerade, state officials depict fossil fuels as inexhaustible resources waiting to be unearthed by multinational capital and novel extractive technologies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-family:"ArialMT",serif">Ryan Jobson</span></strong><span style="font-family:"ArialMT",serif"> is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
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