This introductory chapter outlines the historical and theoretical claims of the book. It situates the emergence of a financial petroculture in the 1973 oil crisis, demonstrating how financial narrativesfinancial narrative" \r "financial_narrative1 frame, orient, and direct the future of energy. It argues that this coheres into a dominant common sense understandingcommon-sensesimple economics of the relation of finance to energy in a period in which society must transition out of a world built by fossil fuels. Finance has come to dominate the representation of energy futures. This chapter is also concerned with moments in which financial narratives break down, when the promise of modernity seems to waver, and other kinds of historical feeling emerge—often crystallising around moments of political upheaval, economic crisis, and ecological breakdown. In tracing this discursive struggle and narrative impasse, I outline financial narrative as a privileged site for a cultural theory of energy.