Preserving Oil: A Conversation with Educators at the Norwegian Petroleum Museum and Oil Museum of Canada

Faced with the contradiction of heritage preservation in an age of ecological collapse, museums around the globe have begun to reckon with their responsibility towards climate mitigation. Often ignored in these discussions are oil museums, understudied cultural attractions where museum workers are tasked with researching, interpreting, and exhibiting the artifacts and histories of an energy industry in transition. This interview, conducted by Camille-Mary Sharp virtually in April 2024, brings into conversation two educators from distinct institutions: the Norwegian Petroleum Museum (Stavanger, Norway) and the Oil Museum of Canada (Oil Springs, Canada). Working ocean, seas, and lakes apart, Julia Stangeland and Christina Sydorko nevertheless find common ground—both raised on farms and trained as teachers, they now channel their passion and expertise towards critical energy literacy for current and future generations. This discussion reflects the interviewees’ individual views and is not representative of their respective institutions. 

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Camille-Mary Sharp (CMS): You both work in “oil museums”—the Norwegian Petroleum Museum (NPM) and the Oil Museum of Canada (OMC). Despite their similar focus, these institutions differ significantly in their size, history, and place. How would you describe your respective museums?

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Christina Sydorko (CS): I work for the Oil Museum of Canada (OMC), a national historic site that is owned and operated by the County of Lambton in southwestern Ontario. It is a small museum—under 500m²—sitting on ten acres of rural land in the village of Oil Springs, about three hours east of Toronto. We employ two full-time staff and two part-time staff, and one or two students join us during the summer school break (which is peak time for our visitors). 

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The OMC was conceived in 1958 as a centennial project celebrating the first commercial oil well in North America, which was hand dug in 1858. The museum opened in 1960 and was recently completely overhauled for its 60th anniversary in 2020. It sits in Ontario’s first industrial heritage district and is surrounded by the still-operating oil fields of Fairbank Oil, which have been operating using 1860s technology. 

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Our museum focuses on the history of oil’s commercialization in the 1800s, on how Indigenous populations in North America utilized oil generations before European colonization, and on the colonial expansion and diaspora of Canadian extractive technologies—for example, looking at how oil drillers from Oil Springs, who started harvesting oil in 1858, spread that technology across 87 different countries by opening international oil fields. They went to Germany, to Poland; they went all over the world. But we are a community museum first and foremost, so we primarily focus on the local petroleum industry. Our task is to study the technical innovation of the petroleum industry in Canada, focusing on the local and on how it impacts the global. 

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Julia Stangeland (JS): I work at the Norwegian Petroleum Museum (NPM) in Stavanger, the oil capital of Norway. The museum (figure 2) turned 25 years old in 2024. It was established in 1999, but the idea for it came as early as 1974. We tell the history of the region of Stavanger and its oil industry, but we also show how the striking of oil has affected the rest of Norway. The history of oil in Norway is shorter than elsewhere—we did not strike oil until 1969, and all of our oil extraction happens offshore. It is the great difference between Norway and other places. Christina, in Canada, do you only have oil on land?

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CS: Outside the museum building, you can actually step in oil. It comes up through the grass. We have gum beds. Gum beds are semi-fluid bitumen deposits comprised of both oil and clay soil particles. The bitumen is a black, sticky, and semi-solid form of petroleum that seeps to the surface (figure 3). People often ask us, “How was oil discovered?”: you can smell it, you can step in it. It naturally oozes out of the ground. But Canadian oil production more generally includes both onshore and offshore operations.

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JS: In Norway, all our oil is extracted offshore. The North Sea was the first area that was opened for oil production. Ekofisk, the first Norwegian oilfield, is on the border of the Danish continental shelf. Later, the Norwegian Sea (north of the 62nd parallel) was opened for oil production as well. Today, we also have production further north, the northernmost field being the gas field Snøhvit (Snow White). Certain maritime areas in the northern parts of Norway are closed for petroleum production due to fishing, climate considerations, or both.

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Stavanger is still called the capital of oil because many oil companies that first came to Norway established their offices and bases here. After that time, our parliament (Stortinget) decided that both our state-owned oil company (Equinor, formerly known as Statoil) and the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate should also be based in Stavanger, further anchoring the city as the oil capital. 

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While the NMP is a national museum, the subject of oil has a different significance for people across Norway. For example, oil is mostly abstract for people in Oslo, for whom the drop in the price of oil in 2014 was not very obvious. In Stavanger, however, I heard about people losing their jobs in the oil industry or being temporarily laid off. The decrease in oil prices also affected secondary and tertiary jobs in Stavanger. When people cut down on expenses and reduced how much they traveled outside the region for instance, fewer employees were needed at travel agencies. The oil industry really works like a motor in the region. When students visit the museum and we ask them if they know anyone working for an oil company or on an offshore platform, many of them say yes. Indeed, chances are that they know someone related to this industry—a parent, grandparent, uncle…mostly men. Of course, some women work offshore, but it is less common. 

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CS: In this sense, my community is similar: one in four people work in petroleum or petrochemicals, because the industry holds this generational wealth of technology and has been operating here since the 1850s. Before there was a Canada, there was an oil industry. Today, we have 62 petrochemical companies employing people in our community—between 5,000 and 10,000 people. And those represent direct employment only; they do not account for people engaged in secondary or tertiary employment, such as engineers, who work for firms that outsource them to various oil companies like Shell, Suncor, Cenovus, etc.

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CMS: Let us speak about what your work entails and what led you to a career in museum education.

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JS: I studied to become a teacher in history and in Norwegian. I wrote my history thesis on the impacts of the Second World War in Norway, specifically Finnmark and Nord-Troms. When I was finishing my education, a job opened up at a museum in Hammerfest, which aligned with my thesis research. I realized it was the job for me, because when I was a student I felt more at home in the department of history than the teaching department. Sometimes, I feel like I am two people—the teacher and the historian—and at the museum, I feel like I can be both. 

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But Hammerfest is quite far north, so I did not want to stay there forever. Eventually, after writing what felt like a million job applications, I was hired at the NPM and moved home. I have now worked here for five years. The museum in Hammerfest was much smaller, which led me to be like a “potato” at work, as we say in Norwegian—doing a bit of everything. I have missed that dimension. Here, we have distinct departments for history, research, student education, guided tours, etc. Nevertheless, I have elbowed my way into other departments. I still teach, and I also do a bit of research, which keeps me quite busy. Aside from teaching and researching, I also plan and do some administrative work. 

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CS: Similarly, I am trained as a history and geography teacher. I spent fifteen years teaching high school history, geography, and family studies (the study of nutrition, parenting, family budgeting, and life skills). As a young teacher, I also had a part-time job in the archives and libraries of cultural services in Lambton County. Once I got in, they could not get rid of me—I loved it. Eventually, it became full-time, permanent work. I made it my mission to redo the entire educational curriculum for the museum. I designed all of our educational programs. Because we are a small museum, we also do outreach, public speaking, and research. We are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so that is when I can go back to the archives or to interviewing people who worked in the oil industry, conducting oral histories and incorporating all of that data into our educational programs and exhibits. I also designed our exhibition touchscreens. I have thus had to learn a lot, for example how to code. It has been difficult. Coding is hard!

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CMS: Oil museums bring together the critical themes of industry, technology, social history, and the natural environment. As museum educators, how do you connect these threads and inspire visitor learning, especially when it comes to sustainability and the environment?

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CS: As a teacher licensed in Ontario, I must look at the curriculum outlined by the province. There is a legal framework for what we teach in Canadian schools; I focus on that framework, specifically on technology or environmental relations such as air and water quality. In reality, almost all students think learning about oil is boring. It represents their parents’ work, it smells…so we need to make the topic of resource development tangible. This approach is not used in any of their textbooks or in the curriculum, so we try to relate oil at a community level, at a micro-level, at the level of the individual. For example, we ask, “How does oil development impact you personally?” The key to these individual stories is that oil affects the air we breathe, the water we drink. Since we live in a community where oil was first harvested on a commercial scale, we have lived with the detrimental effects of petroleum pollution, with higher rates of cancer and lung infection. At the museum, we aim at going beyond these statistics, as we also want to inspire natural curiosity in our visitors and engage them in conversation. Rather than throwing at kids a pile of facts that will make them fall asleep, we challenge them to think constructively and creatively about how oil impacts them personally. Oil is esoteric, but it also impacts people personally; for example, how different would the life of students be if their parents did not work for this or that oil company? 

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In fact, almost everyone in this community knows someone who works in the oil industry. We ask students other key questions such as, “Can you live or function without petroleum-based products?” What most people do not realize is that we live in a petroleum society. Indeed, the material culture of the average Canadian is petroleum-based. Petroleum is in our shampoos, toothbrushes, makeup…clothing, too, is made of synthetic fibers like polyester, spandex, or Lycra. We often talk about how people lived in the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, or the Iron Age, and about how we are now firmly entrenched in the petrochemical age. We want students to understand how petroleum fits in their lives and how they use petroleum products—whether disposal or reusable. We also challenge them to think of ways they can reduce, reuse, and rethink their spending and travel habits. We need to challenge society’s thoughts about oil and the environment. 

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We also expand on simple topics such as geology, asking questions about what oil is, how we extract oil from the ground, how the Earth produces oil, and what tools and science of extraction are used. We also think of the future of this industry. We do not deny climate change—it is very real. For example, we ask visitors how they think green technologies might impact the climate and how we can make the shift from oil to these new technologies. Much of our focus is on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), literacy, and history. How can we help promote creative thinking? It is more about conversations than opinions. 

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JS: The NPM does not deny climate change either, and that is a good thing. Here, we have a “menu” of various topics teachers can choose from when they visit with their classes. For example, if they choose “Climate for Change,” which is the name of one of our exhibitions, we will talk with them about climate. If they choose a program called “In the Footprints of Oil,” we will primarily talk about history. All of these topics are designed for high school students, but we receive mostly ninth graders, who are about 14 to 15 years old. We have a partnership with the city, through which all students from Stavanger eventually come to us, which represents approximately 63 classes, or 1,500 students. We host them in a classroom we call the Energy Room, where they engage in practical tasks and participate in a competition with multiple-choice questions. The class with the highest score wins a “Day of Fun” with us when they enter tenth grade. The Energy Room, of course, features a great amount of content about energy. We talk to students about how electricity is created and why we globally use so much coal, oil, and gas. In Norway, it is quite ironic that more than 90% of our electricity is actually generated through hydropower. Moreover, the oil and gas platform also need power. Most of them create their own power using gas turbines, but some use hydropower produced on land in Norway. The power is transported by cables on the seabed. Other platforms get their power from offshore wind turbines. Because Norway has agreed to reduce CO₂ emissions, some of the political parties have looked to the oil platforms for reductions. In other words, they want more of them to use “cleaner” energy. That means more cables transporting hydropower from land to the platforms. Unfortunately, electricity from hydro power is not unlimited.

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We also discuss with students the severe downsides of using coal, oil, and gas. We divide classes into five groups, each of which makes a film on a different topic: coal, hydropower, wind, oil and gas, and atomic energy. Interestingly, some students do get engaged in the process. Like Christina said, talk should be limited, otherwise students fall asleep. We used to have a history class for older students, but they struggled to stay engaged. So, we regrouped and now we get them to do research themselves.

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CS: At the OMC, we like to take people outside. We are located in the middle of an oil field, so we make visits experiential. Visitors can touch the oil coming up through the grass. They can smell it and see the pumpjacks. We service students from grades 4 to 12. But unlike the NPM in Stavanger, our museum is out in the middle of nowhere, so it is challenging to bring students here. Funding is not available for transporting schools to the museum. They have to fund their own transportation.

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JS: But while you can go outside and touch the oil, we cannot. Many of the kids who come to our museum have never seen an offshore platform, because many of those students are stationary. In the 1970s and 1980s, platforms were being built around and outside of Stavanger, so the technology and the industry were much more visible. Nowadays, some platforms or rigs come into land only to be serviced, and in fact sometimes we see ships passing by that are connected to the oil industry, but otherwise the industry remains quite abstract, even for those whose parents work on a platform or rig. Many of these kids have never been to work with their parents; unlike me, because my dad was a farmer and I essentially lived at his workplace.

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CS: The same is true for me.

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JS: This constitutes a great difference between the experience of the children we receive and our own, because we knew exactly what our parents were doing at work. But hopefully, when students visit our museum, they return home and tell their parents, “I went to the Petroleum Museum—which platform do you work on? Maybe I saw a model of it.” 

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Another way we engage students is with a plastic box we fill with various items: socks, a rug, a shoe, some plastic wire, a gift card (with no money on it, unfortunately). The kids’ task is to figure out which items are made of oil, and which are not. My favorite items are two socks, which I knitted myself. They look exactly the same, but one is made of 100% wool and the other is 80% wool and 20% nylon. Often, the kids struggle to find how the socks are different. And I tell them, “Sorry, but trying to fool ninth-graders is one of my life’s small amusements.”

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CS: We offer the same activity. We include a pop can, lipstick, wine corks (from bottles we had at a party), pencils with erasers, and ChapStick. We call it the “Discovery Bag.” It lives in my desk. Even pop cans—aluminum cans—all have plastic liners, which most people do not realize.

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CMS: In the chapter "Breathing Life into Learning: Ecocultural Pedagogy and the Inside-Out Classroom" (Milstein et al., 2017), the authors sketch a pedagogical approach that intentionally blurs the boundaries between classroom and outside world, or, in our case, between museum and outside world. We have talked a lot about your approaches to teaching schoolchildren, but what do you think of these approaches when it comes to adult visitors? How do strategies in museum education differ between youth and adults?

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CS: The OMC seeks to engage its audience beyond its museum walls by going out into the community to deliver programming to schools, adult-community groups, and seniors. We do this by delivering research-based lectures about history and the legacy of petroleum within the community. What is really nice about these lecture series is that, as people begin to feel comfortable, they open up and share their lived experiences and stories. Examples of these discussions include retired petrochemical workers discussing changes to workplace safety through unionization or new training programs and the introduction of PPE (personal protective equipment) to prevent workplace illness or injury. We also discuss with adult museum visitors the connection between plastic or synthetic fibers in our clothing that are made from petroleum products, as many people do not always make that link. 

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While our student-based educational programs use pedagogical scaffolding to help students understand and analyze complex concepts such as energy infrastructure and consumption as related to economics and the environment, our adult programs can rely on lived experiences to start discussions on these topics and challenge ideas. The Oil Museum of Canada is a safe non-judgmental space to explore ideas around fossil fuels and aid in the formulation of such ideas through conversation—this is the goal of our outreach. 

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JS: Freely translated from our museum’s vision is “knowledge and experiences that create curiosity and insight”. Curiosity is an important clue here, I think. Our goal should be to tickle the curiosity of both students and adults to want to learn more—much more than what can be said in short texts in an exhibition. Whether visitors get additional information in books bought in the museum shop or use our website, the information they seek differs from person to person. Some visitors might be content after the visit and will not crave more information. It is important to remember that museum visitors have very different backgrounds. Some of them work in the oil industry and know it well. Some are local, some are Norwegian tourists, and some are foreigners. No matter the reasons people come and regardless of their background, we think it is important to offer exhibitions that are understandable and offer a mix of texts, objects, movies, sound, lighting, and activities. Activities are especially important. To be able to do something is a great way to learn.

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CMS: Are there challenges to bridging industrial history and heritage with the more contemporary stakes about energy in which visitors might be interested?

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JS: As Christina described is done at the OMC, we also use the official curriculum when planning our programs at the NPM. However, oil is not an explicit part of the curriculum anymore. It has largely been replaced by the environment and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Those topics are important, of course, but it is also important to understand why we use a lot of oil, gas, and coal worldwide. More than 80 percent of our energy comes from these non-renewable resources. When you learn that, you can better understand that you cannot just quit using them overnight. You need to phase them out; if not, you risk a major energy crisis. At the same time, it is important to ask and to answer the question: Why do we use so much oil, gas, and coal when we know that these are nonrenewable and that burning them leads to CO₂ emissions?

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Norway has a Government Pension Fund Global (Norges Bank Investment Management, n.d.)—an “oil fund” in which approximately 80% of what companies earn producing oil and gas is placed. These are taxes that oil companies pay to the government, because the government decided that the oil Norway produces should belong to the people rather than the oil companies.  The fund currently holds over US$1.62 trillion in assets— a great sum of money. We produce about two million barrels of oil each day in Norway, but we do not use much of it ourselves (we use electricity for almost everything, from heating to cooking). Therefore, we are a large exporter of oil—25% of the gas used in all of Europe comes from Norway. 

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Countries that import oil and gas want prices to be as low as possible. But in Norway, it is when oil prices are high that the media and public narratives are much more positive. Of course, the students who visit us might think that striking oil is good for all countries, but we know that it can lead to both civil wars and wars between countries. We are lucky that Norway has strong relationships with Denmark and the UK, given their proximity to our oil and gas fields. So, there are many hypotheticals and angles we can talk about with students, if they are listening. But of course, we have to let them explore these topics themselves, engage them, and hope we pique their curiosity.

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CS: The OMC is very close to the U.S. border, and we live in a highly polarized society, where topics of oil are viewed in very one-sided ways. At the museum, we try to explain how oil has developed and evolved, how it impacts everyday life, and what the environmental impacts of oil dependence are. In Sarnia-Lambton County, this dependence is very apparent. People can see the refineries and the oil rigs, so oil is highly visible. People can also smell it, touch it, and taste it. 

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Because oil is so politically divisive in Canadian and American societies, we tend not to say if oil is good or bad; our job is to tell the history of oil on a local scale. We simply provide facts and encourage visitors to make their own opinion. We also do not shy away from topics like the renewable energy transition. Our exhibitions and programs look both towards the future and towards history, for example through a case study of what an oil spill looks like in this community. We also use many older case studies from the 1860s and 1870s.

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In some ways, Canada is a lot like Norway; we are resource net exporters, whether that is in lumber, mining, or oil. But different parts of Canada have different types of oil production: in the province of Alberta, there are large oil-sands deposits, which tend to produce heavy oil, whereas southwestern Ontario is a very small oil-producing area, but one of North America’s largest petrochemical manufacturing area. We have had to live with the consequences of not understanding that “dilution is not the solution”. Until the 1970s, the strategy was to dilute oil to lower concentrations in the environment—not realizing that chemicals can bio-accumulate there with long-term consequences. 

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At the museum, then, we talk about how to mitigate damage in our modern world and how the industry is shifting and implementing methods of carbon sequestration (for a good explanation of the concept, CLEAR Center 2019) or putting scrubbers on refineries. While we also try to challenge traditional narratives of extraction, we need to do it in a careful way, since many energy companies operate in our community. In many cases, because oil fields predate Confederation (the 1867 formation of the Dominion of Canada), companies “own” the resource in its entirety. The oil fields were “grandfathered in” during Confederation, in the 1850s context when there were few rules and regulations. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that the industry became globally regulated to a much higher degree. Therefore, northern places such as Canada and Norway are experiencing environmental consequences today. The North is warming faster than other regions. I live in Canada, and in 2024 we only had four days of snow during the winter in my community. Mind you, I live in the south of Canada, but it did not snow at all in January there, which is not normal. We are indeed experiencing climate change.

As an educator working within the Oil Museum of Canada, I am eternally conflicted about the role of petroleum in the cultural landscape of my community. One day I may be fascinated by the technological achievements of the early oil industry and the next day heartbroken by the lack of environmental awareness and damage done during the historical period of the late 1800s by the local oil drillers. Oil continues to play a pivotal role in my local community and more generally in the Canadian cultural landscape. As a museum educator, I face a daily struggle to deliver balanced educational programs that challenge students to think deeply about their place in a fossil-fueled world. 

CMS: One of the main goals of energy humanities (an emerging field that examines how “energy resources, systems, and use patterns shape the material, social and cultural conditions of modern life” (Williams 2020) is to bridge theory with practice. Do you see your work as accomplishing this goal?

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CS: Yes, because our programs are designed specifically for students in grades 5-12. At the museum, we try to address energy development and the environment through multiple viewpoints, for example by looking at how energy is consumed through fueling our vehicles, heating our homes, or powering our various personal devices. We delve into the financial costs but also the environmental costs such as greenhouse gas emissions. Responses to these questions can be found on our website under our Energy Conservation or Environmental Resource Management programs. We ask students to calculate the cost of energy use in their respective homes through a math-based worksheet. This exercise connects students’ personal lives to the financial aspects of energy consumption but also reinforces that they are energy consumers with a role to play in energy markets. Finally, once students understand that energy has a financial and personal cost, we lead them to investigate where energy comes from, how energy consumption impacts the environment, and how we can all reduce our energy needs through simple steps such as walking to the store, turning off lights or adjusting the thermostat. 

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As students mature and develop more complex mental frameworks of understanding, we can consider community and environmental impacts of energy extraction and infrastructure. At this point, the museum moves towards a more conversational approach with students, providing opportunities to explore how energy and petroleum impact different groups within our community, such as urbanites, farmers, environmental conservationists, or ideas put forward by the UNESCO to achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals. These learning opportunities can take the form of in-classroom debates or post-museum visit guided discussions that are facilitated by the museum through digital technology such as Zoom or MS Teams meetings. To assist teachers, lesson plans, worksheets, presentation slides, and rubrics are provided. Oil and energy development is a complex social, environmental, and economic issue that is intimately tied to our local history and future. It is sometimes difficult for students to understand that there are no right answers but varying shades of grey when analyzing this topic through the lens of multiple viewpoints or levels of sustainable development. 

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JS: As Christina mentioned, we live in an oil world, both in terms of energy use and of all the oil-based products we use. I cannot say that I use the term “energy humanities” specifically in my work, but my colleagues and I see it as important to teach students that both oil and gas are highly material. They are highly physical things, which impact our social relations—or at least our economy. The lack of energy can also be a motivation for war and conflict (which has been proven several times in the Middle East and has also become clear in Russia’s attack on Ukraine). 

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CMS: Both of your museums’ titles include the name of their host nations—Canada and Norway. How do you navigate this national focus of your institution with the local stories you want to share and the local communities you want to engage?

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CS: The Canadian federal government recognized the importance of our site and its development of the oil industry as early as 1925, which is when it was designated as a national historic site. But the museum is owned by the municipality, the County of Lambton. We are not funded by the Government of Canada—it is the local taxpayer dollars, provincial grants, such as the Community Museum Operating Grans, and revenues from admissions that support us. While the OMC has national significance, our presence is indeed very local. We start our explanations at the local level and move out into the national and international impacts of our local industry. 

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We are named the Oil Museum of Canada because when we opened in 1960, we were the only museum in Canada focused on oil, and because we were the first commercial oil well to operate in North America. Our community began an oil industry even before our U.S. neighbors, although they do not like to admit it. We focus on the local groundwork that laid the foundation for the international oil industry. The development of local drilling technologies and refinement practices were key to national and global development. For example, it was local money that founded the oil wells in Alberta. It was also local drillers (with local money) who went to Egypt and Persia in 1905, to Talara, Peru in 1914, then to Borneo in 1879. The objects and souvenirs these local workers brought back with them became the foundation of our “cabinet of curiosities,” in effect of our museum as a whole. The colonial role of oil is one of our legacies. How do we interpret it? We are eternally conflicted on how to interpret that colonial history. We focus on how workers—we call them the “international drillers”—exported those development and refining practices around the world. We simply do not have the resources to focus on this topic more critically or deeply at this time. 

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JS: Listening to Christina, it becomes clear that Norway has a shorter oil history than Canada. Long before oil was found on the Norwegian continental shelf, Canadian oil workers were ready to export their knowledge. One of the countries needing this knowledge was indeed Norway, even though Norway mostly imported its knowledge from the U.S. Today, however, Norway has become quite important in the oil industry, especially in subsea technologies, and some Norwegian companies have become global. For instance, the Norwegian company Equinor—previously named Statoil—currently operates in many countries. It was owned by the state until it was partly privatized in 2001. One of the most crucial motives for privatizing Statoil was that the company wanted to operate internationally without having to seek government approval for each expansion. 

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Now that Norwegian companies such as Statoil operate in many countries, we can of course talk about the environmental impacts of oil production, but we can also question the kind of deals the companies make abroad; are they corrupt, are they exploitative? It is quite ironic because, in Norway, we are skeptical of international companies coming to “take our things” (for example, part of our railway is now operated by a British firm), but we praise our own companies for going global. I think it is a bit hypocritical.

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CMS: What books or other cultural works have recently inspired your teaching practice?

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CS: I have recently been inspired by the work of Emma June Huebner of Concordia University and her work on the evolving role of social media in museum education. I am fascinated by the way young people seek to engage with history through new mediums and short-form video formats. The digital realm of museum work expands to reach audiences beyond the museum walls, and I want to be a part of that trend. Huebner’s work has encouraged me to include social media as part of our educational toolkit and to create learning experiences from our museum specifically for social media users.

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JS: The picture book Kubbe Lager Museum (“Block is Making a Museum”) inspired me when I wrote the script for our 25-year jubilee in 2024. It is a book for children about a character named Kubbe (“Block”) who makes his own museum. I have also used the book when I worked in Hammerfest. My most inspiring recent experience, however, was a visit to an oil platform named Gullfaks A. Two of my colleagues and I spent three to four days on the platform, taking pictures and talking to people for a project in which we write about the history of the Gullfaks field. The results will be published by the end of 2025. 

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‍Acknowledgements: Camille-Mary Sharp sincerely thanks Christina Sydorko and Julia Stangeland for their time participating in this interview. We would also like to thank the former editors at EuropeNow for their editorial support. This interview was conducted virtually from Lenapehoking, territory of the Lenape people (New York City, USA) and transcribed in Tkaronto, Treaty 13, land of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River (Toronto, Canada). The Oil Museum of Canada is located on the ancestral land of the Chippewa, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples collectively known as the Anishinaabeg (Oil Springs, Canada), and the Norwegian Petroleum Museum is located in Stavanger, Norway.

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Articles in this series

Introduction: Energy Humanities in Practice: Teaching, Technology, Transition

EH in Practice 1: Libraries and Laboratories: Teaching Energy Humanities in Literary Studies

EH in Practice 2: The World of Energy and The Myth of Containerization

EH in Practice 3: Museums and the Challenge of Cultural Decarbonization

EH in Practice 4: Preserving Oil: In Conversation with Educators at the Norwegian Petroleum Museum and Oil Museum of Canada

EH in Practice 5: Virtue Ethics and Ecosabotage

EH in Practice 6: The Rise and Fall of Energiewende: A Case Study in Horse Racing Syndrome

References

CLEAR Center. “What is Carbon Sequestration and How Does it Work?” CLEAR Center, September 20, 2019. https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/what-carbon-sequestration.

Huebner, E. J. TikTok: The Evolving Role of Social Media in Museum Education. Museum Social Media Cultures Research Network, February 29, 2024. https://youtu.be/gDNBX8ItNGw.

Johnsen, Åshild Kanstad. Kubbe Lager Museum. Oslo: Gyldendal, 2010.

Lambton Museums. “Oil Museum of Canada.” Accessed June 26, 2024. https://www.lambtonmuseums.ca/en/oil-museum-of-canada/oil-museum-of-canada.aspx.

Norges Bank Investment Management. “About the Fund.” Accessed June 26, 2024. https://www.nbim.no/en/about-us/about-the-fund/.

Norsk Oljemuseum. “About the Museum.” Accessed June 26, 2024. https://www.norskolje.museum.no/en/om-museet/.

Oil Museum of Canada. “Conservation of Energy.” Accessed June 26, 2024. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VX1267DlUru_Uy0BKZ6fkt9LLkFLSiHkBK2ttgyhN0U/edit#slide=id.p.

Oil Museum of Canada. “Environmental Resource Management.” Accessed June 26, 2024. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gg3dVPEXVx11hrYgm9-ys72q2clYeF9LRtccxfP84yc/edit#slide=id.p.

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