The concept was first developed by Amitav Ghosh to classify literature about the petroleum industry and the impact of oil on society.[3] He coined the term when reviewing Abdul Rahman Munif's Cities of Salt in 1992.[3][4] When describing the concept, he noticed an absence of literature exploring the role of "oil encounters" between countries that extract oil and those that consume.[4][5] Imre Szeman in a 2012 editorial introduction to a special edition of the American Book Review proposed a slightly larger scope: all works that explore "the important role played by oil in contemporary society."[2][5]
Works of petrofiction proliferated in the 2000s and 2010s, along with a growing critical focus, as a result of concerns about climate change and peak oil.[6] Since its inauguration the term has been widely used in literary criticism to explore fiction which evaluates society's dominance by a petroleum economy and a related culture shaped by petroleum.[4][7] Most critics were trying to find works that focused on the oil industry before Cities of Salt.[8] This genre has been particularly important in non-Western literature, exploring how encounters with oil are entangled with other issues in the Global South.[1]
Some critics have connected the role of petrofiction to the emergence of climate fiction, in that both are evaluating and addressing the concerns brought on by the Anthropocene.[9]
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