This comparative study examines how oil-dependent communities learn to understand and value oil through institutional and cultural processes, focusing on Aberdeen, Scotland and St. John’s, Canada. While both cities face mounting pressure to transition away from fossil fuels, their communities struggle to envision post-oil futures despite clear economic and environmental imperatives. Rather than focusing on traditional economic or technical barriers, this research investigates how institutional structures, cultural narratives, and social networks shape community understanding and attachment to oil industries.

The project challenges conventional approaches to energy literacy that emphasize technical competencies and individual behaviors while neglecting deeper sociocultural and political dimensions of oil dependence. Through collaborative fieldwork in both cities, our project examines how local institutions maintain and potentially transform community understanding of oil's importance. Our methodology combines institutional ethnography, semi-structured interviews with community members and industry representatives, and discourse analysis of educational resources, museum exhibits, and policy documents.

We argue that oil dependence fundamentally operates as a learned social relationship maintained through institutional and cultural processes, rather than merely an economic condition. By reconceptualizing oil dependence as a learned social relationship, we reveal why traditional transition policies focused on economic incentives and technical solutions often fail to gain community acceptance. This understanding will enable new approaches to energy transitions that directly engage with and seek to transform the institutional and cultural mechanisms through which communities learn to value and depend on oil.

The research will produce academic publications, policy recommendations, and educational resources for local institutions. Our findings will contribute to both theoretical understanding of energy transitions and practical solutions for communities navigating the complex social and cultural dimensions of moving beyond oil dependence. This work lays the foundation for a larger comparative project across multiple oil-dependent regions globally.