This chapter offers a critical rereading of Omani work history that foregrounds labour, flipping the perspective from the view of industry and capital to the human experience. Through examining the history of labour governance and resistance in Oman, it argues that the contemporary governance, regulatory, and resistance environment for labour have clear lineages in the past. First, it traverses three key legacies governing work and workers – the colonial modes of circulating, disciplining, and classifying labour, the oil industry’s human resources policies, and the management of labour in national economic planning. Second, the chapter traces discourses about workers and how these discourses and prejudices are persistent technologies of governance that influence practices and assessments of employment and development. Together, this reveals a genealogy of practice and discourse underpinned by racial capitalism that have shaped work life in Oman and the Gulf more widely. Finally, the chapter discusses the various forms of contestation to these practices over time, including connections to worker agitation and mobilisation, strike action, and connections with antiimperialist movements.

Even when most of the public accept climate science and elect climate–sincere politicians, the fossil fuel industry and supporters have many rationalizations to delude politicians and citizens that a certain fossil fuel project is needed and consistent with national or global greenhouse gas reduction commitments. Those who see through these myths must develop “connect–the–dot” techniques to show other citizens how fossil fuel expansion in a given jurisdiction is inconsistent with global and national commitments. Success against expanding global fossil fuel supply depends especially, however, on national efforts to decarbonize electricity, transport, and other sectors that are not trade-exposed. Experts should be helping the public, media, and climate-sincere politicians with exposing the myth that “this fossil fuel project is essential.”