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Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank Paperback – February 12, 2008

by Lisa Margonelli (Author)

51 customer reviews

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Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industry—the people, economies, and pipelines that bring us petroleum, brilliantly illuminating a world we encounter every day.

Americans buy ten thousand gallons of gasoline a second, without giving it much of a thought. Where does all this gas come from? Lisa Margonelli’s desire to learn took her on a one-hundred thousand mile journey from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away. In search of the truth behind the myths, she wriggled her way into some of the most off-limits places on earth: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the New York Mercantile Exchange’s crude oil market, oil fields from Venezuela, to Texas, to Chad, and even an Iranian oil platform where the United States fought a forgotten one-day battle.

In a story by turns surreal and alarming, Margonelli meets lonely workers on a Texas drilling rig, an oil analyst who almost gave birth on the NYMEX trading floor, Chadian villagers who are said to wander the oil fields in the guise of lions, a Nigerian warlord who changed the world price of oil with a single cell phone call, and Shanghai bureaucrats who dream of creating a new Detroit.

Deftly piecing together the mammoth economy of oil, Margonelli finds a series of stark warning signs for American drivers.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“If you drive a car, you must read this book.” —Mary Roach, author of Stiff

“By giving voice to the people who are the links in the global oil chain, Margonelli invites us to leapfrog all the rhetoric, dry statistics, and dire pronouncements about oil in order to truly understand it.” —Fast Company

“Hugely enjoyable, compulsively readable, and brilliantly reported.” —Po Bronson, author of What Should I Do with My Life?

“From the corner gas station to the oil fields of Nigeria, there couldn't be a better traveling companion than Margonelli. She's fast, fearless, funny, and a brilliant observer."
—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

About the Author

LISA MARGONELLI is currently an Irvine Fellow at the New America Foundation. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Business 2.0, Discover, and Jane, and was the recipient of a Sundance Institute Fellowship and an excellence in journalism award from the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. She is based in Oakland, California.

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Product details

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books; Reprint edition (February 12, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0767916972
ISBN-13: 978-0767916974
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 51 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #502,210 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #98 in Books > Business & Money > Industries > Energy & Mining > Natural Resource Extraction
- #107 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Energy Production & Extraction > Fossil Fuels > Petroleum
- #209 in Books > Business & Money > Industries > Energy & Mining > Oil & Energy

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Everything You Need To Know About Oil...But Didn't Know How To Ask

April 6, 2007

Verified Purchase

"Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline" is the story, from beginning to end, of how oil is pumped, traded, refined, distributed and sold to the public. In addition, the book covers the conditions, both political and cultural, in a number of oil producing countries.

The book is divided roughly in half. The first half follows the flow of fuel from its start in the ground through the various handlers until it is pumped into your car. The author, however, doesn't just recite a litany of facts. She narrates well and adds information about the processes that are not common knowledge. The second half of the book is a look at where oil originates and the conditions in those countries as they relate to oil. And, the reality is that there is a socio-economic result of discovering and pumping oil from the earth.

The author does a wonderful job of weaving a story out of a number of rather dull facts and makes the book interesting, as well as informative. Her writing style reminded me of the books by Eric Schlosser or Barbara Ehrenreich.

After reading the book I found myself looking at gas stations in a new light and thinking about what I was doing every time I pulled up to the pump. I also noticed I was taking a few extra steps to try to cut my consumption a little. I think this book has a powerful message that needs to be read by the oil consuming public which may help to change their purchasing habits.

11 people found this helpful12 people found this helpful

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VulcansHammer

The real cost of filling up your gas tank.

January 14, 2008

Verified Purchase

Like countless Americans, you pull up to a pump and begin the drudgery of filling your car up with gas (while watching the numbers tick higher and ever higher). As you leave, you can't help but shake your fist at the station. Under your breath you damn the brazen oil companies and their obscene profits.

Lisa Margonelli takes the reader on a long journey through the serpentine infrastructure of mighty oil. Along the way, Margonelli describes and uncovers the irony, the blood politics, the sheer oppressive scope of what it takes to get oil from point A to point B: A sort of reverse engineering to dispirited communities, hopeful venues, nations on the brink of crippling crisis and even great fortunes. From somewhere far, far away and remote to your swollen gas tank.

Aside from spending time in New York, California and Texas, Margonelli treks her way to Chad, Venezuela, Niger, Iran, and China.

You can't have your oil and the price of that fill-up without some history; most of it is boom and bust, bloody, contentious and conniving. The price of gas reflects all these things and more: A convoluted national infrastructure, involvement with petty warlords, a dubious foreign policy, and environmental impact. We love our cars and our roads to somewhere. The price to get to that "somewhere" is something to contemplate in more ways than one.

There is a chapter on the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) which I will admit I knew some of. Margonelli goes into greater detail and I did learn a thing or two. I found it to be very interesting. A chapter on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where oil is traded, is also very informative and revealing.

Overall, I appreciated Margonelli's balanced and vivid writing style. I found her to be fair and straight-forward.

This book is highly recommended.

3 people found this helpful4 people found this helpful

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AdventureMK

I think the better parts were on downstream operations (what happens at the ...

March 3, 2016

Verified Purchase

An interesting read from the layman's perspective of how oil travels from the ground to ultimately your gas tank. I think the better parts were on downstream operations (what happens at the refinery and afterward), while the upstream (drilling) and midstream (pipeline/transportation to refinery) sections didn't have as much depth as I'd hope, even for a layman. That said, it's well written for an author who's not in-industry, and provides some unique insights and presents questions you wouldn't hear from a more seasoned veteran, which is a great perspective.

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Stephen Balbach

Enlightening, inconsistent, diverse, unsympathetic

May 8, 2007

Verified Purchase

Margonelli spent three years traveling around the world documenting different stages in the oil flow. The book can be divided in two parts, the first part in the USA in six chapters: 1) gas station, 2) oil delivery trucks, 3) oil refinery, 4) oil drilling, 5) oil futures market, 6) strategic oil reserve. The second part examines overseas oil sources: 7) Venezuela, 8) Chad, 9) Iran, 10) Nigeria, 11) China. Within each chapter is a human-interest story with Margonelli interacting with a main character (gas station owner, drill operator, oil warlord, Iranian minister of oil, etc..) and tangents to highlight encyclopedic facts about the history of the place or institution in a sometimes overly-stylized magazine-prose.

I found the later overseas chapters the most interesting, to learn about the history of oil states and how interconnected everything is. The vast majority of the worlds oil is owned by governments, and not by the Exxon's of the world which only have about 20%, thus Margonelli's focus on the oil states was spot on. In regards to who is to blame for high gas prices in the US, the best theory was from a oil trader in NYC who says its simple supply and demand, China and other countries are demanding a lot more oil.

4 stars: stylistically the prose was inconsistent. At times it flowed well, other times it was choppy with halting sentences, or tried too hard to be clever and endearing (how many ways can you say "the bolt is as big as (fill in the blank)") - it felt like two different people worked on it. I also thought some of the human interest stories were unnecessarily unsympathetic. The excellent information about oil made it worth the trip, Margonelli's three years traveling around the world to remote and often dangerous places (and probably often boring) has been a great help in understanding first-hand what is happening.

10 people found this helpful11 people found this helpful

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