Oil : money, politics, and power in the 21st century /

In this penetrating study of the modern petroleum industry, journalist and historian Bower (Outrageous Fortune) portrays the last 30 years as a time of both obscene profits and white-knuckle perils for the major oil companies. Having lost market share and pricing power to OPEC, government oil monopolies, and all-powerful commodities markets, Bowers contends, oil companies are locked in a desperate scramble for reserves, most of them located in unstable countries ruled by hostile potentates. He follows executives and engineers as they drill ever deeper under the sea for elusive deposits, brave Machiavellian negotiations with Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchs, and kowtow to Hugo Chavez for access to Venezuela's fields. They weather oil spills, refinery explosions, antitrust regulators, and global warming activists. Bower wallows overmuch in boardroom soap opera, but his analysis of the industry and its shocking price swings is a persuasive one that eschews conspiracy theories and peak oil alarmism to focus on rising demand for reserves that are plentiful but hard to get at. The result is an illuminating look at a business whose real workings are more interesting than the mythology surrounding them. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved