Projects of devotion: energy exploration and moral ambition in the cosmoeconomy of oil and gas in the Western United States

Abstract

This essay considers how people working in the oil and gas industry in Colorado perceive their involvement in energy exploration in relation to broader practices of devotion, compassion, and outreach. I argue that although their energy projects may appear to merely echo companies’ formal promotional pitches, the oilfield and corporate actors’ own moral ambitions reveal more-than-human cosmoeconomic visions of oil's potentiality. This essay thus demonstrates how multiple and diverging ethical registers intersect and inform the valuation of oil.