Tuktoyaktuk: Offshore Oil and a New Arctic Urbanism

Pamela Ritchot

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In 2008, the Canadian Government accepted BP’s $1.18 billion bid for the largest block of offshore oil exploration licenses in the Beaufort Sea. As climate change continues to lengthen the ice-free open water season, oil companies like BP, Exxon Mobil, and Imperial Oil have gained access to previously inaccessible Arctic waters, finding lucrative incentive to expand offshore drilling in its remote territories. Thus the riches of the Canadian Arctic are heightening its status as a highly complex territory of global concern at the nexus of several overlapping geopolitical, environmental, and economic crises, and are placing the construction of its landscape under the auspices of offshore oil development. At the edge of the Beaufort Sea, FIG. 1 — Tuktoyaktuk at the gateway to the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk is geographically positioned as the the Canadian Arctic. Courtesy of author. gateway to these riches, and politically positioned to face this unique confluence occurring across four streams of issues: first, the global crisis of climate change as it rapidly reshapes a once- frozen landscape; second, the massive development potential under oil and gas exploration that is only possible through big industry; third, the history of cultural and geopolitical struggle of the indigenous Inuvialuit people; and fourth, the wielding of national sovereignty through aggressive federal plans for Arctic development FIG. 1. By maximizing the development potential of each issue, and mitigating their possible harmful effects in this fragile context, the various players in this confluence can position Canada’s Arctic territory for a future of urban and architectural opportunity. thresholds 40 Typically imagined as a land of eternal ice, an impermeable frozen landmass nine times the size of California and bounded by the sea, the Arctic coast is actually experiencing some of the most significant effects of climate change. While Tuk’s economic and physical challenges already make it a sort of “Arctic slum” in terms of the conditions of its built infrastructure, by 2050 the situation will worsen as significant permafrost melt will succumb nearly 61% of its remaining karst landmass to inundation FIG. 2. Concurrently, the increasing volatility of a rapidly rising sea is significantly eroding Tuk from its edges. The destruction of the land also threatens the Inuvialuit’s access to the complex ecologies to which their subsistence economy and recreational livelihoods remain vitally linked. As the Canadian Arctic declines at the hands of a climatic crisis, it must seek radical architectural and infrastructural intervention to defend its ecologies and to reconstruct its landscape. As global hydrocarbon discoveries are beyond their peak and current production accounts for only half of consumption worldwide, oil exploration has expanded into the deepwater reserves beneath the rapidly diminishing armor of the Arctic

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1 According to the USGS, the Arctic Circle holds an estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and 1,670 TCF of natural gas. This is about 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30% of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20% of the undiscovered natural gas liquids. See http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article. asp?ID=1980. 2 As the 1970s OPEC oil crisis dropped the price of oil to $9.60 per barrel in 1986, southern oil investors ended their costly, non-conventional endeavors and companies including Dome Petroleum and Gulf Canada went out of business, folding their Arctic pursuits in the Beaufort Sea in 1988. socio—

FIG. 2 — Projections of Tuktoyaktyk in 2050 without and with infrastructure to protect against sea level rise. Courtesy of author.

icecap. As Canada’s Beaufort-Mackenzie Basin holds the largest oil reserve north of 60º, the race for icebound oil will focus on the coastal communities of which Tuktoyaktuk is the most prominent.1 As the number of exploration licenses in the basin increase, the community of Tuk can draw upon recent memory to intuit the threat of unfettered oil development and its subsequent economic and infrastructural desertion. At their extreme, these boom-bust cycles typically exploit a community’s minimal onshore resources and geographic position to bolster a period of productivity that quickly dies as industrial operations close. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the oil industry’s rapid development, exploitation, and eventual retreat expanded Tuktoyaktuk, only to desert the community when 2 the economic viability of offshore development fell Fig. 3. The economic, ecological, and territorial damage wreaked

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FIG. 3 — The urban corpse of previously abandoned ‘70s-era oil infrastructure in Tuktoyaktuk. Courtesy of author.

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by this phase of development mobilized the ratifying of the 3 Signed by both the Inuvialuit and the Inuvialuit Final Agreement (IFA) in 1984, which defined the Canadian government, the goals of the IFA local Inuvialuit land claims and strengthened their control over were to “preserve the Inuvialuit cultural identity and values within a changing 3 natural resources. This forthcoming era of Arctic urbanism will Northern society and enable the equal thus be a litmus test for decades-old policies, as they empower participation of the Inuvialuit in the northern and national economy and society that the Inuvialuit to control the infrastructural development on was taking shape.” See Zoe Ho et al., eds., their land while strategizing Tuk’s long-term, post-oil growth. Inuvialuit Final Agreement: Celebrating 25 Years (Inuvik, NT: Inuvialuit Regional As the owners and operators of the land within the Corporation, 2009), 23. Inuvialuit Settlement Region, the Inuvialuit have the opportunity 4 In his 2010 Speech from the Throne, Prime to lead the future exploration agreements that will determine Minister Stephen Harper identified various whether these reserves will in fact be tapped, and how territorial, research, and development projects—such as a high Arctic research both offshore exploration and onshore production will take station—to exert Arctic sovereignty under its shape. This empowerment thus affords them potential for Northern Strategy. Harper also highlighted oil exploration as a crucial opportunity for real partnership with the oil companies as both parties will northern development. negotiate the provisions of development. As the entropic Arctic landscape slips out from under its communities, these partnerships help to establish the defensive infrastructure needed to stabilize the Inuvialuit’s coastal community. Moreover, as infrastructural development is vitally linked to a region’s economic progress, ensuring that industry develops flexible infrastructure could provide their coastal economy with the necessary foundations upon which to transition from one that is oil-dependent to a post-oil one with a secure socio— position in the global economy.

“As long ago the Mediterranean was the most important Sea in the world because the ruling nations—Rome, Carthage and Egypt— were on its shores, so today the Polar Sea is gaining importance because the three big powers of the world—Canada as a member of the Commonwealth, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R.—are facing each other over this ice- and island- filled ocean. ... The growing importance of the Polar Sea air route is influencing the development of [the North].”

— Canadian Department of Transportation Press Release, 1957

As big industry races to find oil in ice, the Canadian government has shown its own spike in Arctic concern. Canada’s “Northern Strategy” has established a national imperative for increased frontier development—one that is internally unprecedented in its dedication to the economic, infrastructural, and social growth of its Northern territories.4 Canada’s extensive Northern commitments are only now

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5 emerging after decades of neglect. Historically crippled by The utopian plan of Frobisher Bay, a proposed Arctic new town in Nunavut, the geographic and economic strife common to insufficiently intended to exude sovereignty through its serviced, remote communities, the region has faced extreme dominating urban forms and architectural symbols alone. What it did instead, socio-economic lows across a range of issues such as housing, however, was propose a scheme that was access, and high costs of living. Past attempts to right these incompatible with the Arctic landscape and the settlement practices of its Inuit wrongs and exude Northern sovereignty over the land led to population. See Andrew Waldron, “Frobisher earlier federal projects focused on utopian urban plans that Bay Future: Megastructure in a Meta-Land,” Architecture and Ideas 8: 30. ended in failure, omitting the territory from the rest of the 6 nation’s progress.5 However, with the climate crisis progressing “Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows: Diminished Summer Sea Ice Leads to and global interests in remote resources on the rise, the Opening of the Fabled Northwest Passage,” Northern territory may see a reversal of this pattern when these National Snow and Ice Data Center, October 1, 2007, press release. Arctic conditions demand the government’s close attention. 7 For instance, summer sea ice has receded by nearly 50% since See “Breaking the Ice: Everyone Wants a Piece of the Arctic,” Economist, August the mid-1980s suggesting that previously unnavigable Arctic 19, 2004. waters will be completely open within five to fifteen years.6 8 Canada’s 1921 motto, a nation “from sea, The opening of Canada’s Northwest Passage—an international to sea,” changed in 2006 to acknowledge its marine route—will expose Canada’s northernmost coastline, Arctic population. 9 the longest coastline in the world, to new levels of commerce, Anthony Roberts, “Design for the North,” tourism, and military expansion.7 Under its Northern Strategy, Canadian Architect, November 1958. Canada will truly be positioned to identify itself as a nation “from sea, to sea, to sea,”8 and join this Northern alliance with industry and the Inuvialuit. Together they will each play a role to catalyze a more stable future for the Arctic economy. Anthony Roberts has optimistically commented on this timely moment for Arctic urbanism, stating:

thresholds 40 Canada has a greater opportunity than any other country to provide a distinctive national architecture. It will be an architecture based not on a superficial style or on a tradition, but a new and pure form which to be successful, is bound to be unique. Its originality will stem from design based on a social pattern and a series of physical and economic and political conditions which are not found collectively 9 elsewhere in the world today.

Foreseeing the finite economic opportunity afforded by big industry, the nation’s imperatives align with the development capacities of the oil industry in a way that could reposition Tuktoyaktuk for a scale of urban growth that the Inuvialuit could not otherwise execute on their own. Big industry has the capacity to redefine the nature of urbanization as it tears through the local economies, cultural practices, and fragile ecologies constructing company towns in remote territories worldwide. The concept of oil urbanism

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describes company town development where a community’s 10 Edward W. Soja, Postmetropolis: Critical growth booms under the economic and infrastructural Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford, UK: support of the oil industry. Consequently, when this urban Blackwell, 2000). 11 infrastructure is not developed in concordance with local Saskia Sassen described the role of the practices and land uses—including subsistence hunting global city to function as a point within the global economy while developing as and fishing—then the local population left to manage it on a local site of production, innovation, and their own can feel disharmony with its new, unfamiliar, and finance. See Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: abandoned urban morphology: an urban corpse. Prior to Princeton University Press, 2001). discussions of oil urbanism, Patrick Geddes’s Valley Section 12 Robin Block, “The Metropolis Inverted: demonstrates how human settlements have evolved through The Rise and Shift to the Periphery and the connections between economy, commerce, and the surrounding Remaking of the Contemporary City” (PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1994), 225. terrain Fig. 4—contrary to the urban corpse concept. Geddes 13 demonstrates how urban fabric and form must be vitally Mason White, “Resource Fields: Gas Urbanism and Slick Cities,” in Fuel, ed. linked to the traditional practices and land uses specific to that John Knechtel (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, region, thus implying that the abandoned company town—if 2009), 72. not wholly adopted by its local community—will not survive. Presently, however, such geographies of oil urbanization are expanding under conditions that are decentralized, non- physical, and diffuse. Soja describes this post-metropolis city socio—

FIG. 4 — Patrick Geddes’s Valley Section, modified by author.

to be facing contemporary urban phenomena in which the prescriptive models of regional urban form no longer relate to local challenges.10 Instead these geographies take on global challenges such as environmental, transportation, and energy issues, whose local causalities are difficult to chart and whose long-term community impact becomes unclear.11 Arctic urbanism will face oil urbanism in Tuktoyaktuk as it implicates a global economy whose demand for offshore resources “[raises] the stakes for, and may very well demand 12 changes in the way we think about urban planning itself.” Mason White identifies this post-metropolitan discourse as an Arctic reality, noting that the global quest for hydrocarbon exploitation has led to hyperactive economic and geographic development across Northern regions.13 This frantic urban development will uphold weakened national boundaries as global corporations aim to link even the most remote of communities in a network of global cities. This oil urbanism is giving shape to some of the world’s most imposing

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structures, such as the infrastructural megaprojects of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, company towns such as Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, and offshore structures such as the Molkoya artificial island in Norway’s Snohvit Oil Field. Given that the presence of resource wealth has a tendency to evoke economic upheaval, cause political unrest, and launch communities into capitalist-driven eras of development, we can expect the Canadian Arctic to be upon a phase of significant change. At Tuktoyaktuk, the contemporary form of

FIG. 5 — Post-oil Tuktoyaktuk with a retro- the company town will resemble the global city, a new Arctic fitted infrastructure to support new urbanism at the nexus of highly influential agents of change. industries. Courtesy of author. More than a century of conflict has shaped the narrative of the North and, undoubtedly, a resolution must be found between big industry’s structures of permanence and the finite lifespan of their operations. To take advantage of this timely nexus of opportunity, the huge capital investments of onshore and offshore development could incorporate the phased transition of these complex oil infrastructures into new occupations and programmatic uses for the Arctic community Fig. 5. Economic and architectural opportunity will then mitigate this infrastructure’s abandonment as design innovation will bring urban revitalization through the extension of both its programmatic and operational flexibility and its structural permanence. At Tuk, one possible plan of action might be facilitating its transition from a seasonally-frozen ice economy FIG. 6 — A new Arctic urbanism. Courtesy of author. into a productive harbor economy as the open-ice season grows thresholds 40 increasingly long and the mobility of the Northwest Passage brings considerable marine traffic to this Northern gateway. In this scenario, Tuk’s local population is left with a solid, infrastructural fabric upon which its future can thrive and accept new growth as the conditions of the North continue to change. By acknowledging the potential of these unique contextual challenges and finding syntheses between each of the key players’ demands, the Canadian Arctic can enter into a period of strategic development to maximize immediate opportunities and ensure self-sufficiency Fig. 6. As it transitions into a future well beyond the lifespan of offshore oil drilling, Tuktoyaktuk can be a model for oil urbanism’s capacity to foster a new Arctic urbanism applicable to such contentious *** sites around the globe.

Pamela Ritchot received her MArch from MIT in 2011 where her design thesis looked at the infrastructures and operations of offshore oil drilling in the Canadian Arctic. She is currently working in Toronto on a regional infrastructure plan and economic development project for a mining town in Northern Canada. Pamela holds a BED from the University of Manitoba.

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