Download or read book Oil Politics written by Francisco Parra and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the tumultuous history of the international petroleum industry, from its extraordinary growth between 1950 and 1979, presided over by the seven major oil companies, to the price revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, to the re-emergence of Russia as an important but uncertain supplier. Parra charts the changing power dynamics amongst the major oil suppliers and examines their relationships with the major oil importing countries, and how these concerns have impacted on foreign policy.--From publisher's description.
Download or read book Handbook of Oil Politics written by Robert E. Looney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-01-25 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These days, one would have a difficult time picking up a newspaper, or watching a newscast that did not have a lead story dealing with some aspect of oil. From instability in the Middle East, to stock market crashes and concerns over the health of the world economy, to wars that seem to break out unexpectedly around the world, to discussions of global warming, and even speculation over the fate of mankind, oil is usually lurking somewhere in the background. To many, oil markets and their linkages to a whole spectrum of events remain something of a mystery. Unfortunately, most of the easily obtained information on oil is deeply flawed. Whole web-conspiracy sites depict ruthless insiders and reckless dictators manipulating energy markets at will. The 30 essays in this volume, written by the leading experts in the field, attempt to set the record straight. While their assessments may lack the sensationalism of many popular pundits, serious readers will find their insights invaluable in the years to come in providing a framework for understanding many of the events of the day. The volume is divided into sections. Part I provides a broad overview of the political dimensions underlying the supply of oil. Some of the key questions addressed include: is the world running out of oil? And if so, is the cause physical scarcity or political/policy failure? Why are many of the oil-producing countries in the developing world so unstable? Can oil markets be made to provide more stability to the world system? Part II examines some of the political responses to oil-related developments. Here, the key questions concern the role of the political process in the development of alternative sources of energy. The various means through which countries approach their energy security is assessed, as is the problem of climate change. The section ends with the provocative question, do governments really need to go to war for oil? Oil production, energy markets, and the political environment produce distinct regional patterns. Part III examines oil and political power in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Part IV expands some of the main regional themes through a series of case studies on specific countries: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia and Brazil. A final section looks to the future: will the oil curse continue for many countries? How will the growth and expansion of China affect oil prices and availabilities? Will oil-based sovereign wealth funds contribute to global stability or will they create increased political tensions between consuming and producing countries? Will volatile oil markets undermine the US dollar as well as the global financial system? Perhaps appropriately, the volume ends with an assessment of the future of oil in a carbon constrained world. All in all, the essays in this volume cover the whole spectrum of the politics of oil. Hopefully they will help shed light on this vital, yet still often misunderstood topic. The book does not represent any particular political or ideological position. Instead, each author has sought to objectively seek a deeper understanding as to the complexity and subtlety of forces that have all too often eluded policymakers around the world.
Download or read book Oil and Politics in the Gulf written by Jill Crystal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-27 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks why in recent years the social and economic upheavals in Kuwait and Qatar have been accompanied by a remarkable political continuity.
Download or read book Partial Hegemony written by Jeff D. Colgan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When and why does international order change? Easy to take for granted, international governing arrangements shape our world. They allow us to eat food imported from other countries, live safely from nuclear war, travel to foreign cities, profit from our savings, and much else. New threats, including climate change and simmering US-China hostility, lead many to worry that the "liberal order," or the US position within it, is at risk. Theorists often try to understand that situation by looking at other cases of great power decline, like the British Empire or even ancient Athens. Yet so much is different about those cases that we can draw only imperfect lessons from them. A better approach is to look at how the United States itself already lost much of its international dominance, in the 1970s, in the realm of oil. Only now, with several decades of hindsight, can we fully appreciate it. The experiences of that partial decline in American hegemony, and the associated shifts in oil politics, can teach us a lot about general patterns of international order. Leaders and analysts can apply those lessons when seeking to understand or design new international governing arrangements on topics ranging from climate change to peacekeeping, and nuclear proliferation to the global energy transition"--
Download or read book Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea written by Ricardo Soares de Oliveira and published by Hurst & Company. This book was released on 2007 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the paradox at the heart of present-day Gulf of Guinea politics. The governance crisis festering throughout every one of the region's states ought to discourage outsiders from capital-intensive, long-term commercial involvement and cast doubts over the political survival of ruling cliques. However, the presence of large petroleum deposits radically changes this equation: the negative dynamics of state failure and widespread violence affect the general population but spare the oil nexus. The material and political resources made available by oil allow states to survive regardless of bad policies, facilitate their governing elites' material success regardless of reckless management, earn international allies regardless of erratic domestic conduct, and make companies want to invest regardless of risk. The recent oil boom only strengthens this paradoxical viability. Making possible what is arguably the largest inflow of resources into Africa in history, it is of a different order from the short-term viability afforded by the exploitation of other natural resources. Nonetheless, the partnership between insiders and outsiders that permits the extraction of oil is not conducive to positive long-term outcomes in institution-building or broad-based economic growth. Highly dependent on uninterrupted money flows and beset by various destabilising trends, the political economy of oil in the Gulf of Guinea is poised in a state of 'permanent crisis'. This study, based on extensive fieldwork, interviews and engagement with primary and secondary sources, is the first on the subject to take on the regional, as opposed to the country-specific, dimension. It has four key aims. The first is to bring out the extent to which oil has forged the interaction of the region with the world economy and how the ongoing expansion of the oil sector will deepen this pivotal role. Secondly, how this international relevance of petroleum has shaped postcolonial domestic politics and institutions. Thirdly, it examines the interests of different sets of empowered actors in the partnership between importers, producers and oil companies, their interplay, and the manner and contexts in which their goals diverge or converge. Finally, it analyses the sources of long-term sustainability of the political economy of oil in the Gulf of Guinea amidst seemingly unmanageable chaos.
Download or read book Oil and World Politics written by John Foster and published by James Lorimer & Company. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Petroleum is the most valuable commodity in the world and an enormous source of wealth for those who sell it, transport it and transform it for its many uses. As the engine of modern economies and industries, governments everywhere want to assure steady supplies. Without it, their economies would grind to a standstill. Since petroleum is not evenly distributed around the world, powerful countries want to be sure they have access to supplies and markets, whatever the cost to the environment or to human life. Coveting the petroleum of another country is against the rules of international law — yet if accomplished surreptitiously, under the cover of some laudable action, it's a bonanza. This is the basis of "the petroleum game," where countries jockey for control of the world's oil and natural gas. It's an ongoing game of rivalry among global and regional countries, each pursuing its own interests and using whatever tools, allies and organizations offer possible advantage. John Foster has spent his working life as an oil economist. He understands the underlying role played by oil and gas in international affairs. He identifies the hidden issues behind many of the conflicts in the world today. He explores military interventions (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria), tensions around international waterways (Persian Gulf, South China Sea), and use of sanctions or political interference related to petroleum trade (Iran, Russia, Venezuela). He illuminates the petroleum-related reasons for government actions usually camouflaged and rarely discussed publicly by Western politicians or media. Petroleum geopolitics are complex. When clashes and conflicts occur, they are multi-dimensional. This book ferrets out pieces of the multi-faceted puzzle in the dark world of petroleum and fits them together.
Download or read book Carbon Democracy written by Timothy Mitchell and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A brilliant, revisionist argument that places oil companies at the heart of 20th century history—and of the political and environmental crises we now face.” —Guardian Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.
Download or read book Crude Chronicles written by Suzana Sawyer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-07 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecuador is the third-largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the western United States. As the source of this oil, the Ecuadorian Amazon has borne the far-reaching social and environmental consequences of a growing U.S. demand for petroleum and the dynamics of economic globalization it necessitates. Crude Chronicles traces the emergence during the 1990s of a highly organized indigenous movement and its struggles against a U.S. oil company and Ecuadorian neoliberal policies. Against the backdrop of mounting government attempts to privatize and liberalize the national economy, Suzana Sawyer shows how neoliberal reforms in Ecuador led to a crisis of governance, accountability, and representation that spurred one of twentieth-century Latin America’s strongest indigenous movements. Through her rich ethnography of indigenous marches, demonstrations, occupations, and negotiations, Sawyer tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, re-deployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a transnational neoliberal logic. At the same time, she follows the multiple maneuvers and discourses that the multinational corporation and the Ecuadorian state used to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. Ultimately, Sawyer reveals that indigenous struggles over land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about reconfiguring national and transnational inequality—that is, rupturing the silence around racial injustice, exacting spaces of accountability, and rewriting narratives of national belonging—as they were about the material use and extraction of rain-forest resources.
Download or read book Iraq and the Politics of Oil written by Gary Vogler and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was the Iraq war really about oil? As a senior oil advisor for the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) and briefly as minister of oil, Gary Vogler thought he knew. But while doing research for a book about his experience in Iraq, Vogler discovered that what he knew was not the whole story—or even the true story. The Iraq war did have an oil agenda underlying it, one that Vogler had previously denied. This book is his attempt to set the record straight. Iraq and the Politics of Oil is a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the role of the US government in the Iraqi oil sector since 2003. Vogler describes the prewar oil planning and the important decisions made during hostilities to get Iraqi oil flowing several months ahead of schedule. He reveals how, amid the instability of 2006 (largely fueled by the arrogance of early US decisions), the fixing of the Bayji Refinery contributed significantly to the success of the oil sector in the Sunni part of northern Iraq during and after the surge. Vogler gives us an expert insider’s view of the largest oilfield auctions in the history of the international oil industry, and his account shows how US Forces’ focus on a single Iraqi point of failure in 2007 was a primary factor in the record productions and exports of 2012 through 2017. But under the successes so deftly chronicled here, a darker political narrative finally emerges, one that reaches back to the decision to go to war with Iraq. Uncovering it, Vogler revises our understanding of what we were doing in Iraq, even as he gives us a critical, close-up view of that fraught enterprise.
Download or read book Crude Politics written by Paul Sabin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Sabin offers a study of the oil market in California before World War II, showing how the development of an economy & society very heavily dependent upon oil production & consumption was largely directed by policy decisions regarding property rights, regulatory law & public investment.
Download or read book Reasons of State written by G. John Ikenberry and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-05 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lucid and theoretically sophisticated book, G. John Ikenberry focuses on the oil price shocks of 1973–74 and 1979, which placed extraordinary new burdens on governments worldwide and particularly on that of the United States. Reasons of State examines the response of the United States to these and other challenges and identifies both the capacities of the American state to deal with rapid international political and economic change and the limitations that constrain national policy.
Download or read book Mirage written by Aileen Keating and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-05-25 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating history of the discovery, development, and exploitation of Middle East oil, an international journalist tells a largely unknown story rich in drama, conflict, and comic interludes. Illustrations.
Download or read book Oil Politics written by Nnimmo Bassey and published by . This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays here contribute to developing and deepening an understanding of the ecological challenges ravaging Nigeria, Africa and our world today. They illustrate the global nature of these terrors. These essays are are intended as calls to action, as a means of encouraging others facing similar threats to share their experiences.
Download or read book Fuel on the Fire written by Greg Muttitt and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and a host of unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why and how did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis, Britons, and Americans desperately wanted it to end? And why did the troops have to leave? Now, in a gripping account of the war that dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last decade, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveals the heretofore-untold story of the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq. Drawing upon hundreds of unreleased government documents and extensive interviews with senior American, British, and Iraqi officials, Muttitt exposes the plans and preparations that were in place to shape policies in favor of American and British energy interests. We follow him through a labyrinth of clandestine meetings, reneged promises, and abuses of power; we also see how Iraqis struggled for their own say in their future, in spite of their dysfunctional government and rising levels of violence. Through their stories, we begin to see a very different Iraq from the one our politicians have told us about. In light of the Arab revolutions, the war in Libya, and renewed threats against Iran, Fuel on the Fire provides a vital guide to the lessons from Iraq and of the global consequences of America’s persistent oil addiction.
Download or read book Energy Kingdoms written by Jim Krane and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, the Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain—went from being among the world’s poorest and most isolated places to some of its most ostentatiously wealthy. To maintain support, the ruling sheikhs provide their subjects with boundless cheap energy, unwittingly leading to some of the highest consumption rates on earth. Today, as summertime temperatures set new records, the Gulf’s rulers find themselves caught in a dilemma: can they curb their profligacy without jeopardizing the survival of some of the world’s last absolute monarchies? In Energy Kingdoms, Jim Krane takes readers inside these monarchies to consider their conundrum. He traces the history of the Gulf states’ energy use and policies, looking in particular at how energy subsidies have distorted demand. Oil exports are the lifeblood of their political-economic systems—and the basis of their strategic importance—but domestic consumption has begun eating into exports while climate change threatens to render their desert region uninhabitable. At risk are the sheikhdoms’ way of life, their relations with their Western protectors, and their political stability in a chaotic region. Backed by rich fieldwork and deep knowledge of the region, Krane expertly lays out the hard choices that Gulf leaders face to keep their states viable.
Download or read book Petrocultures written by Sheena Wilson and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary life is founded on oil – a cheap, accessible, and rich source of energy that has shaped cities and manufacturing economies at the same time that it has increased mobility, global trade, and environmental devastation. Despite oil’s essential role, full recognition of its social and cultural significance has only become a prominent feature of everyday debate and discussion in the early twenty-first century. Presenting a multifaceted analysis of the cultural, social, and political claims and assumptions that guide how we think and talk about oil, Petrocultures maps the complex and often contradictory ways in which oil has influenced the public’s imagination around the world. This collection of essays shows that oil’s vast network of social and historical narratives and the processes that enable its extraction are what characterize its importance, and that its circulation through this immense web of relations forms worldwide experiences and expectations. Contributors’ essays investigate the discourses surrounding oil in contemporary culture while advancing and configuring new ways to discuss the cultural ecosystem that it has created. A window into the social role of oil, Petrocultures also contemplates what it would mean if human life were no longer deeply shaped by the consumption of fossil fuels.
Download or read book Politics of Oil and Nuclear Technology in Iran written by Akbar E. Torbat and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on oil politics and the development of nuclear technology in Iran, providing a broader historical context to understand Iran’s foreign relations and nuclear policy. The author assesses Iran's encounters with the West in light of major confrontations both in terms of open conflict as well as controversies surrounding treaties with foreign powers. In seeking to understand the geopolitics of oil in direct parallel to the geopolitics of nuclear technology, the book concentrates on Iran’s struggles to nationalize its oil, neo-colonialism, the formation of the oil consortium, and the more recent US backtracking on the nuclear deal with Iran.
