The Promises and Perils of Petrohydrology

This article explores the history of Hong Kong's first desalination plant: the ill-fated Lok On Pai desalter (1975–1990). Built amid great geopolitical uncertainty over dependence on mainland Chinese water, the desalter instead was dependent on the importation of massive quantities of Middle Eastern oil. The desalter thereby rested on long-standing imperial networks linking Hong Kong via Singapore to the Persian Gulf. Inaugurated in 1975, however, the plant was caught in the turmoil of a transforming Middle East following the OPEC crisis of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution in 1979. By focusing on this desalter, the article variegates the geographies of Cold War Hong Kong. It shows the decisive influence in Hong Kong of a different geopolitical risk to the familiar Cold War binarism. So too, it works with theories of the global “petroleumscape” and “petrohydrology” to analyze the networks of hydrocarbons underwriting, and then destabilising, late twentieth-century Hong Kong.