WITH PETROCULTURES 2024, THE BIENNIAL CONFERENCE SERIES COMES FOR THE FIRST TIME TO THE UNITED STATES.

We are delighted to have Los Angeles as our host city since LA epitomizes many of the paradoxes and precarities of early 21^st century petroculture. Before it became a media and entertainment capital of the world, Los Angeles was an oil town, with the spectacle of derricks occupying many of its treasured beaches. Over the course of the 20^th century, LA evolved into a quintessential petro-city, famous for its endless freeways, traffic jams, smog, and consumer culture–and less famous for refineries, pipelines, pumpjacks, and container ships that are key features of the land- and waterscape.