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Pipe Dreams: The Plundering of Iraq’s Oil Wealth Paperback – January 30, 2018

by Erin Banco (Author)

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What happened to Iraq’s oil wealth?

Iraq sits on top of more than 140 billion barrels of oil, making it the owner of the world’s fifth largest reserves. When the United States invaded in 2003, the Bush Administration promised that oil revenue—according to one report, totaling some $700 billion since the invasion, accounting for at least 80 percent of the Iraqi government budget—would be used to win the war and to rebuild and democratize the country. But fifteen years later, those dreams have been shattered. The economy has flat-lined, millions of people are internally displaced, and institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have had to provide billions of dollars to the country every year. Where did all the oil revenue go?

Based on court documents and on exclusive interviews with sources who have investigated energy companies, American, British and Iraqi government officials, and the middlemen between them, reporter Erin Banco traveled to oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan—an autonomous region that holds, according to the regional government, some 45 billion barrels of crude—to uncover how widespread corruption, tribal cronyism, kickbacks to political parties, and the war with ISIS have contributed to the plundering of Iraq’s oil wealth. The region’s economy and political stability have been on the brink of collapse, and local people are suffering. Pipe Dreams is a cautionary tale that reveals how the dream of an oil-financed, American-style democracy in Iraqi Kurdistan now looks like a completely unrealistic fantasy.

Print length

139 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Columbia Global Reports
Publication date

January 30, 2018
Dimensions

5 x 0.5 x 7.4 inches
ISBN-10

0997722940
ISBN-13

978-0997722949
See all details

Bethany McLean
157
Paperback
111 offers from $1.79

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Pipe Dreams is a deeply reported account of an all-to-predictable state of affairs, with corporations and rapacious officials taking advantage of an institutionally weak and unstable country surrounded by war. Many characters in the book emerge with financial credit to their name, but few emerge with any moral credit." —William Armstrong, Hurryiet Daily News

"With her trademark meticulous reporting, Erin Banco brings us the woefully untold story of theft in Iraq: the robbing of the Iraqi people's natural resource rights. She takes us behind the scenes of broken promises and charts an ongoing network of corruption and deceit that has continued to plunder not only Iraq's oil wealth, but the lives of its would-be beneficiaries. The result is a journalistic tour de force that can't be ignored." —Lauren Bohn, co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted and Middle East correspondent for The GroundTruth Project

"Erin Banco expertly tells the complicated story of corruption that lies at the heart of the endless problems gripping Kurdistan and greater Iraq. Her investigative work on the country's troubled oil industry is deeply researched and engagingly told—and it shows how mismanagement and greed have turned a resource that should be a blessing into a curse. The book offers a unique and timely window onto the country's tumultuous past, as well as a lens for understanding the instability and violence that continues to plague it today." —Mike Giglio, BuzzFeed

"Investigative reporter Erin Banco reveals the complicated conspiracies keeping the richness of Iraqi oil from trickling down to the general populace.... Banco's reportage vividly shows the human toll that deceit and subterfuge have taken on a land so rich in natural resources." —Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Erin Banco is a Middle East reporter, and has been covering armed conflict and human rights violations in the Middle East for six years. She began her career as a freelance reporter in Cairo during the Arab spring. She covered the revolts in the region and the war in Syria. After graduating from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, she worked as the Middle East correspondent for International Business Times, breaking stories on the rise of the Islamic State group and on the Free Syrian Army arms program. Banco also traveled to Gaza to cover the war with Israel in the summer of 2014. More recently, Banco began covering the Islamic State group's economy by tracking illicit oil sales in Turkey and Iraq. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and lives in New York City.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia Global Reports (January 30, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 139 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0997722940
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0997722949
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.5 x 7.4 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,782,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #754 in Oil & Energy Industry (Books)
- #1,692 in Political Corruption & Misconduct
- #1,774 in Iraq War History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
5 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		35%
4 star 0% (0%)		0%
3 star		33%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		32%

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michael zimmerman

This is more hearsay and inference as to the guilty parties than it is hard facts on who has benefited the most at Iraq’s expense.

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2018

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Interesting, sad and enlightening in the general, ie about how little benefit the Kurds have received, but it’s not terribly specific as to how bad the culprits are besides the as expected skim taken by opportunists, well placed families, politicians and insiders in any lesser developed country. Said another way, I can’t tell if this is full on theft, nor can I understand how much of the post Hussein woe is due to the global sell off in oil or the broad destruction caused by ISIS.

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Helpful

Helmut von Seydlitz

A good book marred by poor structure

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2018

In this short work Mr. Banco sets out to expose corruption, not just in Baghdad but in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government. This is an important work, as with all of the corruption and scandal in the Iraqi capital, the northern autonomous region is often overlooked by the West, unless one is extolling the virtues of the Kurds. While this is admirable, it also passes over the actually policies of the ruling Kurdish parties. Rampant cronyism and nepotism plague not just the higher levels of the parties themselves but also multiple tiers of the KRG infrastructure.

While Mr. Banco provides a great many examples of this corruption in regards to the oil industry, they are often dry and seemed less like a coherent argument than a list. This takes up a good chunk of the middle portion. However, the last few chapters, dealing with the so called "Islamic State," and the fallout from their occupation were much more interesting and coherent.

Overall, I did enjoy the book but its presentation and structure dragged it down quite a bit.

Helpful

Rahman Connelly

Incredibly well written, and very interesting. A must ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2018

Incredibly well written, and very interesting. A must read for anyone with an interest in the Middle East or politics.

One person found this helpful

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Aral F

An ok read spoilt by factual errors

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

An ok read, spoilt by some factual errors re the history- which both the author and the editor should have spotted, Kurdish history is no longer obscure. Would also have been much stronger if the hearsay had been backed up with evidence, corruption is a real issue across the whole of the Middle East.

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