Paper Unearthing the Earth: Architectural Histories of
Extractivism Symposium, Cornell University, USA,
25-27 March, 2026.
Extractivism Symposium, Cornell University, USA,
25-27 March, 2026.
A 1980s glossy photographic spread in Statoil, a magazine of the Norwegian oil industry, pictured a blond Norwegian child pouring a glass of milk. The caption delighted: “Four-year-old Erlen hardly realises how much plastic there is in his world. Milk cartons contain a lot of plastic. The box for the spread is made entirely of plastic. The cheese is packed in plastic. The paper plates and paper cups are also coated with plastic. If we go on, we can find plastic in the table wax finish, in the wallpaper and in the clothes he is wearing.” Most certainly intended to celebrate the far-reaching achievements of the Norwegian oil industry, this paragraph reads very differently today, in a world increasingly coming to terms with the long-term polluting effects of the petrochemical industry.
Indeed, by the 1980s, the Norwegian “oil adventure” had expanded into all aspects of everyday life, dramatically transforming the lives of thousands of industrial workers, the Norwegian coastline and the natural environment of the North Sea. From the first discovery of the Ekofisk field, the petroleum industry reached far into the sea and the seabed of the Norwegian continental shelf, extracting and regurgitating, lacing the ocean with pipes, ducts, wires and canals, all within a complex global network of oil extraction. Norwegian Contractors, an agglomeration of three engineering firms—Thor Furuholmen, Høyer Ellefsen, and Engineer F. Selmer—established in 1973, physically marked the Norwegian conquest of the sea by developing and building enormous concrete structures for the offshore industry. The company was responsible not only for the majority of mega-scale projects for the oil industry from 1975 to 1995 but also for new housing developments across the ocean in Abidjan and Dakar, which were indirectly fueled by oil profits. However, what was the world’s largest was also the world’s smallest: the grand oil adventure was indebted to the tiny particles of organic matter deposited within sand grain cavities, invisible to the naked eye. The concrete mega-structures, on their part, were made possible by additives and plasticisers, including small silica particles: while improving the castability and resistance of concrete, these were deadly when inhaled, penetrating lung tissue and causing cancerous growth.
This contribution is then particularly interested in the intertwined material, natural and business histories of objects enmeshed within the global infrastructure of oil extractivism. In doing so, the paper complicates the dualistic juxtaposition between natural and man-made structures, considering them part of a global oil ecosystem that persists to this day. Through a close reading of primary archival sources and Statoil magazine, this paper maps the spatial histories of the entirely overlooked mega-projects of Norwegian Contractors against the cultural and economic narratives constructed around oil extraction and extractivism in Norway, a country famous for its environmental values. Ultimately, this contribution offers a snapshot into a conflicting system of narratives, regulations and beliefs that shaped the Norwegian infrastructure of oil extraction and might offer some lessons for our increasingly interdependent global world.