There’s an anecdote of which I’m fond that is commonly attributed to the novelist Kingsley Amis who, upon staring at his mirror reflection and the melancholic void into which had passed the many years and travails of his life, pondered on “what a strange thing it was to have happened to a small boy…”
I found myself slipping into this shallow pool of surreal reflection as I stood in the grand hall of the Kremlin quaffing champagne and scoffing canapes whilst a tuxedoed string section knitted flurries of notes together with their bows. The absurdity of life had never seemed quite so luminous; what strange alchemy of events and circumstance had conspired to deposit me here?
I was in Moscow to attend a major international petroleum congress with work, an opportunity as unique as it was unexpected. Just the weekend before I had been exploring the city of Kiev, marvelling at its European charm and stoicism; and now here I was in Moscow, and in the Kremlin itself!, revelling in the opulent yet adamantine heart of Russian statehood. I felt like the weasel-kid at school sympathising with the weakling at one weekend sleepover and then living it large with the big bully during the next.
It was the opening ceremony and in the general melee my workmate and I got chatting to a Ukrainian photojournalist who said he felt like something of an interloper being there at so volatile a time, on the eve of Russia’s Gazprom cauterising the flow of energy to his homeland.
Not unsurprisingly, he seemed to harbour quite genuine remorse at the predicament and expressed his hope that Putin, mooted as he was to be delivering the keynote address, might offer an apology ‘to save face’ with the Ukrainians. I felt tempted to break this levee of hope by saying that there was probably more chance of Putin stripping naked, oiling himself up and wrestling a brown bear on stage, but demurred for fear of causing upset.
Bizarrely, our photographer friend then siphoned into our circle from the mass of bodies shuddering like contained molecules, a grumpy Russian scientist/businessman, proceeding to expostulate grandly on his pre-eminence and how honoured we should consider ourselves for such a meeting. Throughout this sycophantic introduction, our esteemed associate puffed out his cheeks and roved his fat marble eyes around the vicinity, clearly keen to discern anyone of remotely higher standing than two press-badged minnows from London; obviously mentally admonishing himself for having been ensnared in this way like a dawdling pedestrian by an eager charity-rep.
Not doubting his stature but being fairly convinced as to his poor social etiquette, I attempted to draw him out on the difficulties he had experienced due to the increasingly taut relations between Russia and the West. He sighed heavily and, whilst scanning other attendants rather than meeting my eyes, grumbled “business is business, politics doesn’t much matter…” With such wisdom imparted he offered vague excuses and shuffled off into the fray. Our Ukrainian friend appeared on the verge of breaking into applause, whereas I just wanted to slap him across his root vegetable head.
But then I thought that actually, his rhetoric was quite telling. For in this hall full of oil executives and industry heads it was quite salient that, as far as the metaphorical water table was concerned, the political top soil might be shifted around here and there but below the surface the dirty business of oil keeps on flowing according to its own particular whim.
There is something both overwhelming and terrifying about playing witness to such a colossus of an industry showcasing itself for a few days; particularly one that (not wishing to succumb to hyperbole), has a very considerable influence on the future stability of the entire planet.
The Congress itself was based at the Circus Expo Exhibition Centre, a mammoth manikin to be dressed in the finery of entire industries at will. Sitting in the dehumanising judder-and-jolt of the Moscow morning traffic, I couldn’t help but reflect on how tortuously apposite it was that the only way to attend a congress displaying the efficacy and might of the oil industry should be through the kind of gridlock congestion that makes central London roads look like free-wheeling autobahns.
Exhibition centres are the most diaphanous of modern buildings, they are like airports without the allure of impending flight, shopping malls without the wish fulfilment of commerce, motorway services without the juxtaposition of stopping amidst continuous momentum.
They are vast monuments to nothing except empty space, phantom architecture taking on transparent forms. Gleaming bright marble floors, escalators pinioned between multiple levels, wide expanses of corridor that feed into a tremendous delta of a foyer, and the constant swimming pool burbling of static noise that clots the air like a thick wool.
The immense hall was gridded with stands from all the major oil players – BP, Shell, Gazprom, ExxonMobil, et al – as well as more minor figures; there was a Ukrainian Petroleum Stand (or cubicle) but it remained poignantly bare, a mere tin shack next to these futuristic villas of monopolised market power. On the second floor was a showroom of luxury sportscars – Ferraris, Bugattis, Lamborghinis – for delegates to peruse and splash their black gold on these oil-thirsty symbols of personal prestige.
If there’s one thing I always find oddly amusing about exhibitions, it’s the ubiquitous lanyards, with the excess length dangling down peoples’ backs like a ponytail. I start to see peoples’ heads as balloons on the end of string, severed by the scissor-legs of yet another stereotypically attractive Russian woman to float away with distraction from their conversations.
Entering into conversation with anyone is presaged by a reflex flickering of the eyes over the inscribed lanyard details, in what I see as a forebear of the social scanning techniques that will become an involuntary instinct as soon as we are all overlain with displays of our ‘digital profiles’.
Away from the talks and discussions there are small huddles of grey-suited men, the cogs of business deals being wrenched into rotation. Escalators ascend and descend with static conga lines of people furiously tapping on or barking into handheld devices. Quite a lot of the time I feel like Jonathan Pryce in ‘Brazil’, turning up to the Ministry of Information and finding himself being swept up in the flash flood current of bleating and braying bureaucrats as they circulate the building without an apparent destination.
Over the four days of the Congress, I find myself traversing through the four ideological seasons that can generally be said to inform the span of a lifetime.
On the first day I am awe-inspired by the scale and the vibrancy, my senses becoming accustomed to such a voluminous environment. On the second day, I become frustrated at the stumbling blocks preventing headway being made with my own agenda, and after attending a few talks, become inflated with a righteous anger at the perceived intransigence I perceive of those at the top table. By the third day, my residual anger has been shouted down by a surge of pragmatism and a determined effort to ‘play the game’ and achieve the aims I had been tasked with. And on the fourth day, I arrive at a place of weary acceptance, however reluctant, that this is unavoidably ‘the way of things’, encroaching upon a vague gratitude that the whole charade is nearing its close.
Despite approaching the congress knowing that my personal socio-political views would likely be out of kilter with the received wisdom of the delegates, I still found myself, at the end of the second day, infected with a certain misanthropic disenchantment.
From the talks that I attend, the impression I’m left with of the debate on display is of its stiflingly prosaic tone, evocative of a party political conference. Barely any alternative opinions of any discernible persuasion are aired, there are scarcely any searching questions posed, it all appears like a giant rig platform for people to demonstrate how firmly their hands are clasped around the same pump.
At my lowest ebb I start imagining everyone as an oil derrick, mechanically bobbing up and down, dredging up the same PR messages from the same well.
Whether they would acknowledge it or not, the petroleum industry have many complex issues and predicaments to address, both internally and in the public arena. Instead, the general aura surrounding the presentations and limited discussion is (to quote that tiresome phrase) to ‘keep calm and carry on’. From what I observe there is never any mention of renewables or the issues of climate change that the oil industry plays such an influential role in affecting.
The only time environmentalism is uttered is with the kind of condescending sneer that makes you believe their perception hasn’t moved an inch from the image of 60’s hippies, when people grew long hair, smoked drugs and chained themselves to trees in an irritating affectation of eco-awareness. There's a sense that anyone with such views of energy plurality are akin to the heretical Cathars to be crusaded against by the all-powerful Catholic papacy of oil.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certain that there are very many incredible achievements being wrought in the industry that offer a continual benefit to very many societies worldwide. I’m also aware that the industry is as uniformly maligned as the banking industry, and that disastrous events such as Deepwater Horizon cast a disproportionately large shadow over the industry as a whole.
That being said though, it is my firm belief that history will not judge these people kindly at all. The generations to come, who will have to contend on an ever-increasing regularity with ecological catastrophes, and face disruption through ever more global conflicts, with rightly look on the era of our unrestrained thirst for oil, like bees sucking up the nectar with a single-minded lust, as a truly shameful folly.
Positive progress can, and should be made, but is attainable only as a result of dialectical discussion and introspective examination; and this is surely possible on the proviso that there be a forum in which honesty, transparency and rigorous interrogation can be allowed to thrive.
Those making up the panels are high-profile, highly paid representatives who should be subject to a far greater degree of scrutiny than the self-congratulatory feather-bedding they face here. On one panel I observe, focusing on the ethics and the public perception of the industry, there is such a nauseating air of apologetic entitlement; each trying to represent themselves as being sorely misunderstood yet coming across as unwilling to demonstrate engagement with, or responsibility for, a great many geopolitical, ethical and environmental quandaries that stare the world in the face.
The critical problem, I deduce, is not strictly with the practitioners such as these, however tunnelled their vision might be, but the larger scale systems in which they operate; a problem that is promiscuous amongst countless other industries in our modern age.
The natural resource that these companies exist to exploit has been so valorised that it has become just another product to be traded according to the exigencies of the marketplace. They are beholden to their shareholders who demand healthy investment returns, and it is this unassailable fact that prohibits the kind of honest and searching debate that might fuel decisive progress.
You need only look to Ecuador’s recent energy policy as an example of a developing nation attempting to manage their abundant natural resources responsibly and prudently only to be let down by the perfidious short-sightedness of the international community.
I think this exists in parallel with late capitalism and the sense that somehow the current ‘way of things’ must begin to shift into a new gear. The answer is regulation, sanctions and a tighter control on transnational energy companies that utilise their vast wealth of human knowledge simply to maximise profits and raise share prices above those of their major competitors.
You don’t have to be a fully paid-up Marxist to know that such a manifest desire for more of everything at a greater profitability is ultimately doomed to expire; but it takes governments that are resistant to lobbying to stand up to these companies and impose industry-wide structures that compel them to cooperate and act in a socially and environmentally responsible way.
I came to the realisation that my ire was wasted on these company mouthpieces, given that they are operating perfectly naturally given the field in which they have for too long been given free rein to graze.
With my moment of clarity casting a halcyon glow over the event, I found myself able to disengage somewhat and drink in the proceedings with a renewed ambivalence. By the final day I felt I was able to identify the nagging oversight afflicting the whole event.
The whole raison d’etre of the congress, every statement, every proclamation is centred in the some way around this commodity known as ‘oil’. A naturally occurring substance formed deep underground by intense pressures exerted upon long-dead life forms which then comes to represent this quasi-mystical elixir, this ‘black gold’ for which wars are waged and without which our lives are scarcely imaginable.
And yet, this organic substance is, I come to realise, completely absent from the event. Instead of this fundamental detachment, I felt everyone would benefit enormously from getting their hands dirty with the stuff; get barrels of the crude liquid into the centre of the exhibition hall, let people swim and squirm around the oleaginous oom-ska; becoming attuned to some deeply sublimated primordial psychology; and by the very physical process of communion perhaps breach the mental barrier between the commoditised unit of trade, and the pungent, butyraceous gloop in all its glory.
I’m being facetious of course. The lanyards would be ruined and just imagine the dry-cleaning bill for all those grey-toned suits…
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