‘We work for the Devil’: Oil extraction, kinship and the fantasy of time on the offshore frontier

In the offshore oil industry of Takoradi, Ghana, white expatriate workers describe extraction as both ‘the work Devil’ and a ‘labour love’. While companies strive to produce timeless spaceless fantasy ‘frictionless profit’, emphasize sacrificial economy where risk, loss distance are traded in pursuit an ideal family life. this article, I argue that operational structures labour regime (characterized by rotation pattern, continuous production, distant locations, segregated workforce, mobile installations) create not only model capital accumulation, but mode being making kin. workers’ aspirations ‘good life’ parental care, pitting time against distance, interpersonal ruins remain when they fray. probing how make petro-capitalism affectively workable, exploring entangled processes extractive reproductive labour, article contributes recent scholarship on role kinship sustaining global capitalism.