Energy security in the maritime Arctic: pouring old wine into new oceans

Energy security has traditionally been framed in terms of ensuring stable and affordable access to energy sources, such as oil and natural gas, where it is understood that the countries that control the oil spigot control the global economy. As the world shifts toward renewable energy systems, strategic minerals are increasingly framed in a similar way, as the new geopolitical assets. This chapter analyses this shift in the context of the ‘return of geopolitics’ to the Arctic, and in particular to the maritime Arctic, as it has been accompanied by a concern about how the region may be a site of energy insecurity, as well as hopes that the region can host innovations that will provide the world with sustainable energy security solutions. Nowhere is this clearer than in Norway, where energy security is mobilized as a geo/political discourse, with the energy security framing that has long prevailed for oil and gas now being transferred to a different resource base. Oil and gas production is presented as crucial to European security while deep sea mining is presented as crucial to the Western decarbonization project through a self-fulfilling process of what we term ‘geopolitical forecasting’. In this way new frontiers for appropriation are integrated into pre-existing state economic imaginaries and governance practices. In response, this chapter proposes a research agenda that explores not simply how new energy sources can mobilised for ‘energy security’ but how energy transitions can be genuinely transformative for how we conceptualise both governance and security.