Paparazzi Ethnography

Energy journalists are key players in Arctic natural gas development. We began noticing the influence of journalists when observing the Alaska Governors. Members of the Governor’s cabinet were highly concerned with the reporting of news events.

In fact, within the Alaska Governor Tony Knowles administration (where we began our paparazzi ethnography) we noticed a few journalists highly placed within the administration. They were word-crafters and public spokespersons for the Governor. Persons like David Ramseur, whose career began as an Alaska journalist, but in the final years of the Knowles administration, he became Chief-of-Staff. David recently is serving as Chief-of-Staff for Alaska U.S. Senator Mark Begich. Ramseur kept his cards close to his breast. He often wrote policy speeches for the Governor and kept an eye on daily press releases that we turned out for the Alaska media.

Journalist, L. Persily as Federal Coordinator

Another journalist who flittered between political appointments and freelancing for the Anchorage Daily News is Larry Persily. Larry is a master wordsmith. Under Knowles, he was Deputy Commissioner of Revenue and coined the term now famously delivered by the Governor, “My Way is the Highway” — which was in response to a policy favoring the Alaska-Canada Highway as the best route for an Alaska natural gas pipeline (should it ever be built).


Larry was hired also by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin in order so that he would not work as a journalist. We met up with Larry in Washington, D.C. recently, to see his new digs, as reflected in this photograph above. He is the Congressionally appointed Federal Coordinator on the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline Project.

Moving on, in Moscow, we were lucky to meet with the quiet, humble, and high-in-demand journalist for The Wall Street Journal, Jacob Grønholt-Pedersen. Jacob is from Copenhagen. He speaks perfect English, Russian, and Danish. We initially saw Jacob’s writings when he was reporting on the Barents Sea Shtokman natural gas project. We contacted him by email. Here is an image from an internet search of his name.

We met Jacob for lunch on the pedestrian-only Kamergersky Pereulok – a sidestreet and popular hangout in Moscow. In fact, the street abuts the Cambridge Energy Consulting office where we met energy consultant Vitaly Yermakov. Here is a photo of Alex standing next to the Cambridge Energy bronze plaque.
















Here is an example of headline by Jacob:

Energy Journalists on the Timing of Events

• The issue of expertise surrounding development of the Barents Sea Shtokman natural gas field is reported upon in the press differently depending on the any one event, meeting or issue taking place. For ecological organizations, it is a chance to inquire into how potential industrial wastes and hazards will be handled. For representatives of Shtokman Development AG (the energy partnership) it is an opportunity to promote how information produced by environmental consultants will be made available. For trade organizations (builders, tenders) in Norway, they consider anxiously how they will be involved in the project.

• The initial article that drew our attention to Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen’s work was printed in the Dow Jones Newswire. It is titled, Russian LNG Aims Face Big Challenges in Arctic Regions, and dated Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

• Main tag line: “Russia’s priority project, the massive Shtokman offshore field in the Barents Sea north of Murmansk—a joint project with France’s Total S.A. and Norway’s StatoilHydro”.

• In this article, Jacob demonstrates his access to expert analysts in the field. He quotes Vitaly Yermakov — Director of Moscow branch of Cambridge Energy; an “analyst” (unnamed source) from UniCredit and Ron Smith — Chief Strategist at Moscow-based Alfa Bank.

• This main issue discussed concerns when the project will move forward at all. And we find printed here various statements by independent consultants or finance organizations who presumably are located somewhere in Moscow and whose comments are specifically limited to timing. Everyone wants to know about the timing of events. These statements on timing (2013, 2015, 2025, never) encapsulate an entirety of expectations surrounding regulatory and economic conditions.

• If you google Moscow Cambridge Energy director, Vitaly Yermakov, his name appears in relation to Cambridge Energy Director in the Washington D.C. office, Matthew J. Sagers, who is author of an academic reaction paper to Milov et. al (2006), (the latter article appearing in the syllabus of Yale anthropologist Doug Rogers on energy in Russia). In addition to working with Yermakov, Sagers also cites in his bibliography an article collaboration with Russian gas economist Valeriy Kryukov, who we had dinner with in Oslo along with Oxford Energy Institute’s Jonathan Stern, at the Petromaks Workshop sponsored by the Norwegian Research Council — the same group who sponsored the Norwegian-Russian Arctic Gas Workshop in Murmansk, titled Petrosam (see below). Both Stern and Kryukov have been publishing for decades on Russian gas developments, together with Arild Moe of Norway’s Fridtjof Nansen Institute (see the post on Moe and Stern below).

• In the article we refer to, Sager responds to the “nature of Russia’s official energy policy” (“ad hoc” rather than “systemic”). He comments primarily on whether Milov et. al are correct in their empirical assessments of oil exports, pricing developments, price deregulation, gas supply, export flows.

• Essentially — what we draw attention to here is that there are various levels of detail entrenched in different spaces (academic journals, dinners, workshops), that bubble up to the surface through the work of journalists and often times in the form of statements about the timing of events.

• The social function of the work of Pedersen, is to write stories in the form of news articles that serve as a hieroglyph, a consecrated form of expert interaction, a condensation of information flow, whose depth is flattened out by publication in the press, but that retains its hold as a source of knowledge because of its lineage, as represented by the various actors cited in text. We suppose the apt metaphor would be a tip of the ice berg. Articles by Pedersen, are like the tip of an ice berg — whose actual dimensions of depth — everyone in the know can recognize by its appearance on the surface of things.