Motherly oil industry: Governing the desire for climate action through petro-feminine spatial imaginaries

This article examines how the oil industry's recent public communication strategies operate as petro-feminine spatial imaginaries , shaping and governing desires for climate action within affluent, carbon-intensive societies. Existing scholarship has interpreted the industry's post-denialist turn primarily as an effort to deflect accountability for climate change, either by blaming consumers or through greenwashing. Analysing recent corporate campaigns and expanding existing conceptualizations of petro-masculinity while engaging debates on neoliberal feminism and CSR/pinkwashing, I advance the concept of petro-femininity . I argue that oil companies are increasingly constructing spatial imaginaries that recast themselves as motherly figures, no longer denying or solely deflecting responsibility for climate change but instead caring for Mother Nature. This gendered stance displaces the reality of climate change, enacting an imaginary that mirrors and supports consumer desires for ecological reassurance, symbolic climate action, and carbon-intensive continuity. I consider how the growing penetration of the oil industry into global climate governance – strikingly epitomised by oil executives chairing recent COP conferences – is an expression of an evolving post-denialist petro-masculinity crucially made possible by petro-femininity. This hybrid governmentality fuses masculine authority with the comforting illusion of a motherly oil industry, enabling oil companies to present themselves as indispensable stewards of the energy transition.