{"id":60176,"date":"2023-07-11T10:03:32","date_gmt":"2023-07-11T17:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=60176"},"modified":"2023-07-11T10:20:35","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T17:20:35","slug":"canadian-oil-and-gas-sector-misunderstands-the-power-of-narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/opinion\/canadian-oil-and-gas-sector-misunderstands-the-power-of-narratives\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian oil and gas sector misunderstands the power of narratives"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Troy Media<\/a> on July 5, 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Bill Whitelaw<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

If I had a dollar for every time someone in Canada\u2019s oil and gas industry laments\u00a0\u201cwe need to change the narrative,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0you wouldn\u2019t be reading this.<\/p>\n

Because I wouldn\u2019t have written it.<\/p>\n

I would be down in Margaritaville, channelling Jimmy Buffet and searching for my long-lost shaker of salt.<\/p>\n

I would be a rich man \u2013 a very rich man because I hear that lament almost daily, in dozens of different contexts.<\/p>\n

But I have written this it\u2019s an uncomfortable truth that needs airing as we move ever further into increasingly complex and contested energy times.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about how we \u201cspeak energy\u201d \u2013 and how our sector needs to think about Energy as a Second Language.<\/p>\n

So much of what we do gets lost in translation, because we don\u2019t understand what narratives are and how they\u2019re created and sustained.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a problem because paradoxically, instead of world events coalescing civil society on all matters of energy, we\u2019ve moving ever further to the poles \u2013 to the point that even our poles are polarizing.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: the above-noted \u201cnarrative-change\u201d complaint, while understandable in terms of sentiment, is off the mark. It\u2019s one of those sweeping statements that captures a broad range of sectoral emotions, anxieties, and aspirations. It represents decades worth of consternation, concern and complaining. It brings to mind the old childhood ditty, with a contemporary twist:\u00a0\u201cNobody likes me \u2026everybody hates me \u2026 I think I\u2019ll go eat some worms, er, change a narrative.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the lament is about a desire to change someone else\u2019s narrative(s). We\u2019re so preoccupied with those anti-oil-and-gas narratives that we (tend to) forget we have our own sectoral narratives, which we should be focusing on changing because they\u2019re not working for us.<\/p>\n

The hubris which often underpins this desired change (to someone else\u2019s narrative) compounds our own narrative identity problem. It fails to account for the fact we\u00a0in oil and ga<\/em>s already have plenty of, perhaps less apparent (to us), narratives. We just don\u2019t understand them for what they are \u2013 and how they show up, especially outside the sector. It\u2019s those industry-owned narratives that get us in social and political hot water.<\/p>\n

The industry\u2019s own neurosis about this stuff borders on comical. It has built over time and verges on the edge of paranoia for some constituencies within oil and gas. We now largely exist in a belief system in which politicians (of the left), the public (similarly disposed), and media (aren\u2019t they all lefties?) are seen as having as their life mission the condemnation and, ultimately, elimination, of the upstream oil and gas sector.<\/p>\n

Something must be done, dictates our internal industry logic, to change the way people think. And we must change the unfair, biased, and inaccurate narratives to which society is exposed.<\/p>\n

And thus, it distills down to a sense that it\u2019s a simple \u201cnarrative fix.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uh Uh.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another thing. Even if changing an opposing narrative was possible (it\u2019s not, at least in the way lamenters imagine), the whole notion of change belies a profound misunderstanding of how the world of energy talk actually works.<\/p>\n

Narratives are what they are: solid and imperturbable monoliths; they\u2019re not malleable constructs changeable by willpower or desire alone \u2013 particularly when you don\u2019t \u201cown\u201d them. Narratives are also funny things; they are notions that defy easy definition and delineation. Ask 10 university English profs to define \u201cnarrative,\u201d and you will get 10 answers different enough to leave you bewildered. And all 10 answers would be fair and accurate \u2013 if understood within the context in which the definition was sought.<\/p>\n

But what incenses many oil and gas folks \u2013 some to the point of apoplexy \u2013 is they believe they must change the anti-oil and gas narratives out there.<\/p>\n

However, the only narratives we can change are our own \u2026 and we need plenty of introspection on that front. Narratives are inviolate in that way. Their very essence underpins their identity and thus enhances their invulnerability to change. An anti-oil narrative is just that: anti-oil. No amount of energy industry desire (or political posturing) can change that.<\/p>\n

In fact, what we\u2019re experiencing is a narrative clash of the titans: \u201cours\u201d versus \u201ctheirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, why do we keep spinning those tiresome\u00a0\u201cchange their narrative\u201d<\/em>\u00a0wheels?<\/p>\n

The sector needs to start its own brand-spanking new counter-narratives. They need to be innovative and carefully thought out. And they need to be cast in terms of a new way of thinking through the language of energy \u2013 a vernacular built on less inflammatory, de-politicized, and more conciliatory and collaborative linguistics.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why. Our common prevailing narratives are built on the following themes:<\/p>\n