Customer Reviews

Oil Titans

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Everyone knows the seven sisters: Standard Oil (Exxon), Royal Dutch Shell, Anglo-Iranian Oil (British Petroleum), Texaco, Socony (then Mobil), Gulf, and Standard Oil California (Chevron). Gulf, Texaco merged with Chevron. Exxon merged with Mobil. Seven became four. French Total merged with Fina, is another giant. Very few people knew anything about the Middle East oil companies. This book covers 5 of them: 1. Abu Dubai National Oil Company (ADNOC), 2. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), 3. National Iran Oil Company (NIOC), 4. Saudi Arabia Aramco, and 5. Sonatrach of Algeria. The government owns at least 51% of these national oil companies. In the west, most oil engineers are 50 years old. In these 5 companies, majority are young men, 25 to 30 years old. They speak English, make nice PowerPoint presentation, and have good IT skills. They are learning the oil business and they are very proud to be employed by the national oil firms. The rest of the countries are not doing well, even with the high oil rents collected by the government. Oil rents cannot be the only source of income. These government need to develop other industries to provide jobs for the young. Other OPEC countris: Iraq, Qatar, Libya, Indonesia, Venezuela have national oil companies too. It has good coverage on National Oil Libya, Petronas of Malaysia, Petrobras Brazil, Pertamina Indonesia, Qatar National Gas Company, Statoil Norway, Nigeria National Petroleum Corp, Petroleos De Venezuela SA(PDVSA), Pemex Mexico, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), and Gazprom Russia. With the increasing global demand and the rise of the oil prices, these companies need to train their engineers, collaborate with the 5 international oil giants, and continue to develop pipelines and distributions. Their work is cut out for them for the next 20 years. I recommend this book for any one who wishes to learn the global oil buiness. It would be better if CEOs, company information, websites of these five firms are included.

Don't look now, but five nationally owned oil companies (NOCs) control more than half the world's reserves of oil and natural gas. In today's media-steeped culture you might expect those companies to be under a constant microscope, but actually their operations tend to be cloaked in bureaucratic smoke. Valerie Marcel's book sheds valuable light on the way these companies operate and the red-tape constraints they face. While the book suffers from a rather colorless presentation, it more than compensates for this with insights into what the NOCs are and how they relate to the world's insatiable thirst for petroleum. We recommend this book to serious students of the global energy business.

This is a very informative book about the real economic situation in the countries of the middle east and the business of oil. Is startling to realize that, thought there is a big income because of the oil now days, the producers countries face problems regarding internal subsidies and that the NOCs (National Oil Companies) are the source of jobs for the country, even thought most cases are not needed. The book show the companies that are doing well and also those with problems. In my opinion is vital for these countries to diversify its economy, thinking on what to do next after the oil age, and I'm not talking of gas only.