Tuktoyaktuk: Offshore Oil and a New Arctic Urbanism
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TUKTOYAKTUK: OFFSHORE OIL AND A NEW ARCTIC URBANISM Pamela riTChoT Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 PAMELA RITCHOT 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 68 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 TUKTOYAKTUK 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 69 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 PAMELA RITCHOT THRESHOLDS 40 FIG. 3 — The urban corpse of previously abandoned ‘70s-era oil infrastructure in Tuktoyaktuk. Courtesy of author. 70 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 TUKTOYAKTUK 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 71 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/thld_a_00133 by guest on 29 September 2021 PAMELA RITCHOT 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