A historical and ethnographic study of the fraught relationship between fossil fuels and political power in Trinidad and Tobago. Examining the past, present, and future of Trinidad and Tobago-s oil and gas industries, anthropologist Ryan Cecil Jobson traces how a model of governance fashioned during prior oil booms is imperiled by declining fossil fuel production and a loss of state control. Despite the twin-island nation-s increasingly volatile and vulnerable financial condition, however, government officials continue to promote it as a land of inexhaustible resources and potentially limitless profits. The result is what Jobson calls a -masquerade of permanence- whereby Trinbagonian state actors represent the nation as an interminable reserve of hydrocarbons primed for multinational investment. In The Petro-State Masquerade, Jobson examines the gulf between this narrative crafted by the postcolonial state and the vexed realities of its dwindling petroleum-fueled aspirations. After mor
