Evaluating the global heritage of oil and energy production

This session will bring together four specialists in the history of the production of oil and petroleum, natural gas, coal and nuclear energy, to debate the distinct as well as shared issues around the study and protection of their industrial heritage. 

The history of energy production is characterized by groundbreaking technological advances and achievements, enormous technological, social and environmental consequences, and the evolution of distinctive landscapes and communities. The depletion, exhaustion and obsolescence of energy resources present common as well as unique challenges to the historians and conservators who have to deal with decommissioning, identify the most significant heritage assets, and to find acceptable and viable ways to safeguard them.

The session will build on TICCIH's thematic study of the oil industry [<https://ticcih.org/ticcih-thematic-studies-and-published-reports/>] to examine the wider legacy of energy production, and to compare different approaches to conservation and interpretation. These embrace digital documentation, museum acquisitions, conservation in situ, historic reproductions, World Heritage inscriptions, and other scales of historic landscape protection. The session will encourage a critical examinations of the heritage of energy production, recognizing tremendous importance of energy for human societies as well as the environmental implications of conservation.