The Reef in the Oilfield: American Petroleum Geologists in Belize, 1955–2001

Why have reefs been strikingly proximate to offshore oil drilling in the 20^th century? The answer lies in their specific, often abstruse, value to petroleum geology. In this presentation, I use the case study of American petroleum geology in Belize to trace shifting disciplinary frameworks through which reefs have been understood across the 20^th century, particularly in relation to petroleum geology and ecological sciences. Well before independence, Belize, like many countries with largely unmapped reef systems, leased extensive offshore tracts to major US oil companies, including Shell and Esso, for seismic exploration and drilling. Petroleum-driven surveys did not explicitly differentiate between live reefs and fossilized reefs that served as carbonate reservoirs; their working definitions illuminate the nature of geological work and technical knowledge. The "reef" and the "oilfield" were and are inherently linked, a premise that is not evident in public discourse about the threat of oil drilling to reefs, which often focuses on emissions and potential oil spills.

Ecology, meanwhile, focuses on the living. Of course, “ecology” is far too broad a category, too; it masks distinctions between fisheries science, ecosystems management, and ecology as circumscribed by American universities. Each construed the reef differently and had very different conceptions of the reef’s value. By independence, it was clear that oil companies had little success in Belize. Why, then, did American prospectors continue apace? Here, I focus on one key definitional difference to explain the promise of Belize’s oil reserves: specifically, between the “framework reef” of petroleum geology, which describes carbonate formations that are potential hydrocarbon reservoirs, and conservation-driven sciences, which increasingly framed reefs as ecosystems of economic and environmental value, particularly with the rising salience of Belize’s tourism industry to its economy. The politics of “conservation” played out in policy debates and public protests, shaping the postcolonial nation’s management of its marine environment in the heady context of its reliance on international financial institutions and foreign investment in the wake of the OPEC oil crisis. As a conflagration of interests converged on Belize’s reefs, the very disciplinary premises underlying how knowledge about the reef was produced and legitimized—specifically those of petroleum geology and various fields of biology—were obfuscated by opaque and varied articulations of the reef itself.

Through maps, survey reports, leases, and the specific forms of evidence marshaled for prospecting, I argue that US petroleum geologists had a more direct interest in live reefs than it appeared. And yet, their technical conceptualizations often escaped even the oil industry's most ardent critics and arguably continue to do so today. Broadly, I argue that this calls for attention to the blurriness between living and non-living, a binary that must be problematized to understand the true nature of offshore oil prospecting and drilling in the Anthropocene.