The Mechanics of Service

In the 1970s and 1980s, oil companies scrambled to combat the mounting power of OPEC and oilfield nationalizations by searching for new sources of oil. Houston-based oilfield services companies – which sold their oilfield expertise to oil fields across the globe – were key players in these new exploration projects. Their flexibility in working with oilfield owners as presumed partners rather than as owners made their presence in oil extraction palatable in nations otherwise skeptical of American oilfield presence. Meanwhile, their involvement transformed labor organization and threatened workers’ ability to organize.

This paper looks to the Norwegian North Sea as a case study of how the rising importance of oilfield services companies shaped global oil exploration during the 1970s and 1980s. Houston-based companies’ involvement in the North Sea entrenched exploitative labor regimes for Norwegian and Spanish, Portuguese, and Mexican workers offshore, effectively undermining Norwegian labor law. At the same time, the companies’ eventual hiring of Norwegian engineers and managers sheds light on how oilfield services companies used education and training programs to contain critiques of their involvement and to conduct international relations on their own terms.

Even while the Norwegian state advertised its commitment to economic equality and labor protections, it allied with companies that evaded its labor protections. Fearing the loss of American oilfield expertise, the Norwegian government refused to intervene to protect non-Norwegian contract workers whose legal rights were violated. The North Sea demonstrated the implications of the business strategy that oilfield services companies had been developing for decades. Oil companies and oil-rich states the world over believed that extracting oil depended on Houston-based companies’ expertise. And in the liminal space of the offshore oilfield, national laws fell short of containing companies that were Houston-based but stateless.