Green petroculture : Insights from the oil corporation Preem’s tall oil strategy
Roos, Andreas and Ekberg, Kristoffer LU
(2026)
In Global Environmental Change
98.
- Abstract
- The petroculture literature shows how fossil fuels have profoundly shaped modern cultures. This study introduces the concept of green petroculture to describe a cultural phase in which environmentally motivated solutions remain rooted in petrocultural ways of thinking and acting. Analysing the Swedish oil corporation Preem’s tall oil production, we examine how corporate sustainability strategies sustain this phase. Through a causal thematic analysis of eleven sustainability reports, the study identifies the mechanisms through which green petrocultures may emerge. These include environmental statism, alienation from nature, greenwashing, denial, reductionism, and environmental load displacement. These mechanisms interact to sustain... (More)
- The petroculture literature shows how fossil fuels have profoundly shaped modern cultures. This study introduces the concept of green petroculture to describe a cultural phase in which environmentally motivated solutions remain rooted in petrocultural ways of thinking and acting. Analysing the Swedish oil corporation Preem’s tall oil production, we examine how corporate sustainability strategies sustain this phase. Through a causal thematic analysis of eleven sustainability reports, the study identifies the mechanisms through which green petrocultures may emerge. These include environmental statism, alienation from nature, greenwashing, denial, reductionism, and environmental load displacement. These mechanisms interact to sustain surface-level sustainability responses that displace the environmental burdens of low-carbon energy systems elsewhere. In Preem’s case, the company promotes tall oil as a climate solution while obscuring the global environmental impacts of land requirements equivalent to three times the surface area of Sweden. The study highlights the importance of understanding green petroculture as a cultural phase with global environmental implications and offers insights into how societies might move beyond it toward genuine ecological and social transformation. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/27d18df2-f3d0-42e9-88a6-ad30c33db1ad
- author
- Roos, Andreas
and Ekberg, Kristoffer
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2026-05-06
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Petroculture, Low-carbon energy systems, Tall oil, Causal thematic analysis, Environmental load displacement, Alienation
- in
- Global Environmental Change
- volume
- 98
- article number
- 103165
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:105038613167
- ISSN
- 0959-3780
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103165
- project
- Green petroculture: The case of the Swedish oil corporation Preem's pine biodiesel narrative and its opponents
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 27d18df2-f3d0-42e9-88a6-ad30c33db1ad
- date added to LUP
- 2026-05-08 12:12:49
- date last changed
- 2026-07-17 04:01:45
@article{27d18df2-f3d0-42e9-88a6-ad30c33db1ad,
abstract = {{The petroculture literature shows how fossil fuels have profoundly shaped modern cultures. This study introduces the concept of green petroculture to describe a cultural phase in which environmentally motivated solutions remain rooted in petrocultural ways of thinking and acting. Analysing the Swedish oil corporation Preem’s tall oil production, we examine how corporate sustainability strategies sustain this phase. Through a causal thematic analysis of eleven sustainability reports, the study identifies the mechanisms through which green petrocultures may emerge. These include environmental statism, alienation from nature, greenwashing, denial, reductionism, and environmental load displacement. These mechanisms interact to sustain surface-level sustainability responses that displace the environmental burdens of low-carbon energy systems elsewhere. In Preem’s case, the company promotes tall oil as a climate solution while obscuring the global environmental impacts of land requirements equivalent to three times the surface area of Sweden. The study highlights the importance of understanding green petroculture as a cultural phase with global environmental implications and offers insights into how societies might move beyond it toward genuine ecological and social transformation.}},
author = {{Roos, Andreas and Ekberg, Kristoffer}},
issn = {{0959-3780}},
keywords = {{Petroculture; Low-carbon energy systems; Tall oil; Causal thematic analysis; Environmental load displacement; Alienation}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{05}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Global Environmental Change}},
title = {{Green petroculture : Insights from the oil corporation Preem’s tall oil strategy}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103165}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2026.103165}},
volume = {{98}},
year = {{2026}},
}