Oil: Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century [Hardcover]

Tom Bower (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 3, 2010

With unparalleled insight into BP and its safety record leading up to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Tom Bower gives us a groundbreaking, in-depth, and authoritative twenty-year history of the hunt and speculation for our most vital natural resource.


OIL

Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century

Twenty years ago oil cost about $7 a barrel. In 2008 the price soared to $148 and then fell to below $40. In the midst of this extraordinary volatility, the major oil conglomerates still spent over a trillion dollars in an increasingly frantic search for more.

The story of oil is a story of high stakes and extreme risk. It is the story of the crushing rivalries between men and women exploring for oil five miles beneath the sea, battling for control of the world's biggest corporations, and gambling billions of dollars twenty-four hours every day on oil's prices. It is the story of corporate chieftains in Dallas and London, traders in New York, oil-oligarchs in Moscow, and globe-trotting politicians-all maneuvering for power.

With the world as his canvas, acclaimed investigative reporter Tom Bower gathers unprecedented firsthand information from hundreds of sources to give readers the definitive, untold modern history of oil . . . the ultimate story of arrogance, intrigue, and greed.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Sweeping in scope and densely detailed...a rare and highly illuminating global perspective on the industry over the last two decades." (The New York Times)

"In this penetrating study of the modern petroleum industry, journalist and historian Bower) portrays the last 30 years as a time of both obscene profits and white-knuckle perils for the major oil companies.....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." (Publishers Weekly)

"Oil couldn't be a hotter or messier topic, making Bower's sprawling exploration of its modern history - told through the perspectives of engineers, traders, an oligarch and industry players such as BP's John Browne and Exxon's Lee Raymond- all the more timely." (USA Today)

"[Bower's book is] ominous, even prescient, in what it says about BP's past practices." (LA Times)

"With one of the worst environmental disasters in American history now troubling the waters and coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, this monumental history of the oil industry during the past two decades has much more relevance...This exhaustively researched and well-written volume covers the whole waterfront of major oil companies, the people who run them, the roles of politicians and governments in chasing oil, the traders who have yo-yoed its price, the wars that have been fueled by competition for it and the role it continues to play in regional and global instability." (Fort Worth Star Telegram)

"Investigative journalist Tom Bower has used the same narrative approach as Sampson [The Seven Sisters] and Yergin [The Prize] to bring the industry's story forward from the 1980s to the present day, and his book bears comparison with theirs . . . the reader is ushered into a front-row seat, and what follows is often gripping. However fast-paced, Bower cleverly keeps the action in focus . . . [he] builds up a brilliant picture . . . [and] achieves impressively seamless continuity." (The Times Literary Supplement (London))

"A roller-coaster account . . . [Bower] has a real sense of the drama of deal-making and deal-breaking, of keeping vast corporations afloat in conditions that are rarely stable." (Telegraph (UK))

"Bower gets the big strategic judgments right." (The Sunday Times (London))

"A gripping and convincing account of the turbulent story of the global oil industry . . . the events he covers are scarcely less dramatic than those described in The Prize, including the ascent of the oil price to record highs. Bower's book has the advantage of being scorchingly topical . . . provides the fascinating story behind the headlines . . . a first-rate account of where the oil industry is now, and some useful pointers as to where it is going." (Financial Times (UK))

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 516 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (June 3, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446547980
• ISBN-13: 978-0446547987
• Product Dimensions: 1.6 x 6.3 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #266,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Oil company strategies July 20, 2010

By M. Sessions

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book was advertised as a sequel to the Prize by Daniel Yurgin and that is what I expected. However it is really quite a different read and lacks the big historical perspective of the Prize. The information contained in the book on the actions and thinking of the modern (post 1990) oil companies is very revealing however and provides unusual insights about them over the past 20 or so years. Those views are very helpful in understanding a number of moves made by the various companies lately. I found their adventures into post Soviet Russia very instructive. The author seems to have had very good connections into BP (as well as most of the others) which are helpful in understanding the recent turmoil surrounding that company's problems. I also found the descriptions of international oil trading useful in understanding much of the volatile price moves in oil over the past decades. The style of the book causes one to repeat going through various time lines, but the details conveyed were worth it. This is a must read for anyone interested in gaining a better insight into how the modern oil industry works and reflects the investigative journalism approach of the author. Excellent details on the various leaders of the companies too.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book I've Read on Crude Oil August 8, 2010

By Michael Martin VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Tom Bower's new book is the best book on crude oil that I've ever read. Crude oil is a very complicated business. It is about 180 degrees out of phase with the simplicity of e-commerce.

Bower spoke with more than 250 industry professionals, politicians, and analysts over an 18 month period of time in order to complete this book. IMHO, I think academics and Liberals will learn the most from this book. It is written as the definitive history of crude oil - and it's backed up by facts. Not make believe facts or Michael Moore Facts either, but real facts, that in the end provide readers with a well-rounded understanding of America's addiction to crude oil and how we got here.

I've written a blog post at Huffington Post and I have recorded a podcast - all can be found via my blog.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Watery May 18, 2011

By Brad MacKenzie

Format:Hardcover

While the full history would be essential reading, this book doesn't give the full history. The book's billing as an update on Yergin's epic, "The Prize", does discredit to Yergin. Bower is good at getting interviews, and is able to do adequate research, but he's a poor writer. He apologizes for himself, saying he's just "telling the story", but even if he aspires to nothing more than a soap opera presentation, it's a story that is just not that well-told. Frankly, the story is worth telling well, and Bower isn't really up to it.

He leaves little suspenseful sentences dangling all over, and never goes back to explain them or tie them into the narrative. He dumps data and information at odd moments. It's relevant, useful data, but it has no context, either in the place where it's presented or in the book as a whole.

Yes, now we know some anecdotes and episodes from "the next 20 years" (post-Yergin, and "The Seven Sisters" before that), but we really don't gain a cohesive view of the entire playing field, or the oil majors' role in the 21st-century world industry. I feel like he got terrific access to industry professionals in exchange for soft-pedaling the stories that those professionals were willing to tell, more or less the way they wanted the stories told.

I'm not willing to let him off the hook, as others have, by saying, "it's a complicated industry". No duh. That's why we're buying the book: to unravel the complications and get a better view, both from the macro-, 10,000-foot level, and the micro-, inside the board room, level. And we don't. We get glimpses, but not insight.

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth reading March 31, 2011

By HDIAndrew

Format:Hardcover

Bowers provides an excellent look at the oil industry pre-BP's Gulf spill. He provides a good overview of a number of the key players, and anyone impacted by the oil industry (in other words, all of us) would do well to read this book. His look at oil trading and brokers was excellent. The book is rather more complementary of the oil companies than I would have been, and it would be well served with both a timeline and a section describing the cast of characters, but since I cannot give it a 4.5, it deserves its five stars.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but no Prize January 4, 2011

By rsahiwal

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Pretty decent update on the oil industry in the last 20 years. No overarching narrative. Choppy in style. Nowhere close to being a successor to the "The Prize".

4.0 out of 5 stars more up to date than the Prize but less informative December 21, 2010

By Douglas Metcalf

Format:Hardcover

Oil in the 21st Century is more concentrated with less reputable companies (BP, for example). Book explains why decisions are made that to the outsider seem strange.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Like Shadowing an Oil Exec for a Week August 25, 2010

By Kirk Cheney

Format:Hardcover

Over the course of the week it took me to read this, I felt like I was personally immersed in the modern oil business. Reading this book about the same time as Burrough's "The Big Rich" gave me a good feeling for how the business has evolved, and how in so many ways it hasn't (still a race to find elephants, still an industry where inside information and access is paramount, still an arena for big personalities). Two things about the book really struck me: (1) the breathtaking technological complexity of extracting oil from remaining reserves, (2) the inextricable interconnection of oil and politics.
I agree with the other reviewer that some of the descriptions of personnel decisions within the companies were a bit tedious.
It was particularly illuminating to read this book after the Deepwater Horizon spill, because the end of the book spells out BP's shoddy safety record and its contribution to the company's slip from "best in class" status.
In summary, this is a great book that will entertain you and get you up to speed on an industry which touches every part of our daily affairs, from your local gas station to the international battlefields.