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Book Empires and Anarchies

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Quentin Morton
  • Publisher : Reaktion Books
  • Release : 2017-09-15
  • ISBN : 1780238614
  • Pages : 265 pages

Download or read book Empires and Anarchies written by Michael Quentin Morton and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oil lies at the heart of the modern history of the Middle East. For decades, the world’s largest oil reserves have enriched the region’s nations. But oil wealth has not brought with it universal prosperity. It has, though, transformed the Middle Eastern people and societies—enriching empires and engendering anarchies. Empires and Anarchies is an unconventional history of oil in the Middle East. In Michael Quentin Morton’s account the burnt-out remains of Saddam Hussein’s armaments and the human tragedy of the Arab Spring are as much of the story as the shimmering skylines of oil-rich nations. From the first explorers trudging through the desert to the excesses of the Peacock Throne and the high stakes of OPEC, Morton lays out the history of oil in compelling detail, arguing that oil simultaneously enriched and fractured the Middle East, eroding traditional ways of life, and eventually contributing to the rise of Islamic radicalism. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the promises and peril of the world’s oil boom.

Book The Oil Kings

    Book Details:
  • Author : Andrew Scott Cooper
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2012-09-11
  • ISBN : 1439155186
  • Pages : 544 pages

Download or read book The Oil Kings written by Andrew Scott Cooper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relying on a rich cache of previously classified notes, transcripts, cables, policy briefs, and memoranda, Andrew Cooper explains how oil drove, even corrupted, American foreign policy during a time when Cold War imperatives still applied, and tells why in the 1970s the U.S. switched its Middle East allegiance from the Shah of Iran to the Saudi royal family. Amid the oil shocks of the early 1970s, there was one man the U.S. could rely on: the Shah of Iran. The Shah sold us oil; we sold him weapons. But the U.S. and other industrialized economies could not tolerate repeated annual double digit increases in oil prices. During the 1976 election campaign, President Gerald Ford decided that he had to find a country that would break the OPEC monopoly and sell the U.S. oil more cheaply. On the advice of Treasury Secretary William Simon -- and against the advice of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- Ford made a deal to sell advanced weaponry to the Saudis in exchange for a more moderate price hike in oil. The Shah's economy was destabilized, and disaffected elements mobilized to overthrow him. The U.S. had embarked on a long relationship with the autocratic Saudi kingdom that continues to this day.

Book The Arabian American Oil Company and Middle East Oil

Download or read book The Arabian American Oil Company and Middle East Oil written by Lon J. Swindell and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Mirage

    Book Details:
  • Author : Aileen Keating
  • Publisher : Prometheus Books
  • Release : 2012-05-25
  • ISBN : 1615925384
  • Pages : 560 pages

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.

Book Oil Titans

    Book Details:
  • Author : Valerie Marcel
  • Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
  • Release : 2007-05-01
  • ISBN : 9780815754725
  • Pages : 348 pages

Download or read book Oil Titans written by Valerie Marcel and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Brookings Institution Press and Chatham House publication Ninety percent of the world's oil reserves are entrusted to state-owned companies. Originally created as political instruments, these so-called national oil companies (NOCs) face new demands amid today's dwindling oil reserves and simmering social pressures. Increasingly, state-owned oil firms—particularly in the Middle East—are having to balance the political demands of their governments with the need to be commercially competitive. In this ground-breaking new volume, Valerie Marcel draws on unprecedented access to the politicians, engineers; and businessmen directing five Middle Eastern state oil companies to shed light on one of the most secretive segments of the international oil industry. The author tells the stories of Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the National Iranian Oil Co., Sonatrach of Algeria, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.—oil titans which together produce one quarter of the world's oil and hold half of the world's known oil and gas reserves. Dr. Marcel explains the complex bond between each state and its oil company, tracing the relationship's evolution from the politically charged days of foreign concessions to today's world of profit-driven decisionmaking. Drawn from over 120 interviews with company executives, middle managers, and oil-ministry officials, the author identifies a number of surprising new trends in these companies' strategy, and she paints a picture of their nascent sense of corporate identity. The book provides rare, up-to-date insight into how state-owned companies are striking a balance between their national mission and their commercial needs. The book also provides an insider's guide to these companies' unique culture. Executives and researchers in the region—both inside and outside the oil industry—will find it a valuable tool for understanding business in the Middle East.

Book Oil Titans

    Book Details:
  • Author : Valerie Marcel
  • Publisher : Brookings Institution Press
  • Release : 2007-05-01
  • ISBN : 0815754728
  • Pages : 338 pages

Download or read book Oil Titans written by Valerie Marcel and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Brookings Institution Press and Chatham House publication Ninety percent of the world's oil reserves are entrusted to state-owned companies. Originally created as political instruments, these so-called national oil companies (NOCs) face new demands amid today's dwindling oil reserves and simmering social pressures. Increasingly, state-owned oil firms—particularly in the Middle East—are having to balance the political demands of their governments with the need to be commercially competitive. In this ground-breaking new volume, Valerie Marcel draws on unprecedented access to the politicians, engineers; and businessmen directing five Middle Eastern state oil companies to shed light on one of the most secretive segments of the international oil industry. The author tells the stories of Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the National Iranian Oil Co., Sonatrach of Algeria, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.—oil titans which together produce one quarter of the world's oil and hold half of the world's known oil and gas reserves. Dr. Marcel explains the complex bond between each state and its oil company, tracing the relationship's evolution from the politically charged days of foreign concessions to today's world of profit-driven decisionmaking. Drawn from over 120 interviews with company executives, middle managers, and oil-ministry officials, the author identifies a number of surprising new trends in these companies' strategy, and she paints a picture of their nascent sense of corporate identity. The book provides rare, up-to-date insight into how state-owned companies are striking a balance between their national mission and their commercial needs. The book also provides an insider's guide to these companies' unique culture. Executives and researchers in the region—both inside and outside the oil industry—will find it a valuable tool for understanding business in the Middle East.

Book America s Kingdom

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robert Vitalis
  • Publisher : Verso Books
  • Release : 2020-05-05
  • ISBN : 1789604451
  • Pages : 562 pages

Download or read book America s Kingdom written by Robert Vitalis and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now newly updated, America's Kingdom debunks the many myths that now surround the United States's special relationship with Saudi Arabia, also known as "the deal": oil for security. Exploding the long-established myth that the Arabian American Oil Company, Aramco, made miracles happen in the desert, Robert Vitalis shows how oil led the US government to follow the company to the kingdom, and how oil and Aramco quickly became America's largest single overseas private enterprise. From the establishment in the 1930s of a Jim Crow system in the Dhahran oil camps, to the consolidation of America's Kingdom under the House of Fahd, the royal faction that still rules today, this is a meticulously researched account of Aramco as a microcosm of the colonial order.

Book Oil  Power  and Principle

    Book Details:
  • Author : Mostafa Elm
  • Publisher : Syracuse University Press
  • Release : 1994-12-01
  • ISBN : 9780815626428
  • Pages : 444 pages

Download or read book Oil Power and Principle written by Mostafa Elm and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1994-12-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work deals with the oil crises of the 1950s, precipitated by Iran's decision to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The roots of the revolt against British imperialism are explored here, along with the long-term consequences of instability in the Middle East.

Book Oil  Power  and War

    Book Details:
  • Author : Matthieu Auzanneau
  • Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing
  • Release : 2020-02-20
  • ISBN : 1603589783
  • Pages : 674 pages

Download or read book Oil Power and War written by Matthieu Auzanneau and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of oil is one of hubris, fortune, betrayal, and destruction. It is the story of a resource that has been undeniably central to the creation of our modern culture, and ever-present during the darkest exploits of empire the world over. For the past 150 years, oil has become the most essential ingredient for economic, military, and political power. And it has brought us to our present moment in which political leaders and the fossil-fuel industry consider extraordinary, and extraordinarily dangerous, policy on a world stage marked by shifting power bases. Upending the conventional wisdom by crafting a “people’s history,” award-winning journalist Matthieu Auzanneau deftly traces how oil became a national and then global addiction, outlines the enormous consequences of that addiction, sheds new light on major historical and contemporary figures, and raises new questions about stories we thought we knew well: What really sparked the oil crises in the 1970s, the shift away from the gold standard at Bretton Woods, or even the financial crash of 2008? How has oil shaped the events that have defined our times: two world wars, the Cold War, the Great Depression, ongoing wars in the Middle East, the advent of neoliberalism, and the Great Recession, among them? With brutal clarity, Oil, Power, and War exposes the heavy hand oil has had in all of our lives—and illustrates how much heavier that hand could get during the increasingly desperate race to control the last of the world’s easily and cheaply extractable reserves.

Book Carbon Democracy

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.

Book Oil Powers

    Book Details:
  • Author : Victor McFarland
  • Publisher : Columbia University Press
  • Release : 2020-07-14
  • ISBN : 0231552076
  • Pages : 216 pages

Download or read book Oil Powers written by Victor McFarland and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the mid-twentieth century, the United States and Saudi Arabia have built a close but often troubled alliance. In this critical history, Victor McFarland reveals the deep ties binding the leaders of the two nations. Connecting foreign relations and domestic politics, McFarland challenges the view that the U.S.-Saudi alliance is the inevitable consequence of American energy demand and Saudi Arabia’s huge oil reserves. Oil Powers traces the growth of the alliance through a dense web of political, economic, and social connections that bolstered royal and executive power and the national-security state. McFarland shows how U.S. and Saudi elites collaborated to advance their shared interests against rivals at home and abroad. During the 1970s, as higher oil prices enriched the Saudi government, destabilized the American economy, and changed the balance of power in the Middle East, leaders of both countries responded by consolidating their alliance. Facing objections from their own people, Washington and Riyadh chose to shield their partnership from public oversight and accountability. While American support empowered the Saudi royal family and helped the kingdom expand its influence across the Middle East, Saudi elites also encouraged a rightward shift in U.S. foreign and economic policy—with profound long-term effects. Oil Powers reveals the role of the U.S.-Saudi alliance in laying the groundwork for American military involvement in the Middle East and the entrenchment of a global order fueled by oil.

Book Oil in the Middle East

    Book Details:
  • Author : Dr King
  • Publisher : Heinemann-Raintree Library
  • Release : 2005-11-02
  • ISBN : 9781410916242
  • Pages : 64 pages

Download or read book Oil in the Middle East written by Dr King and published by Heinemann-Raintree Library. This book was released on 2005-11-02 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oil is an important resource for the world, and we are dependent on the Middle East for much of our supply. This book answers key questions about the region's history, such as: How did oil affect the development of the Middle East's countries? How have oil incomes benefited the region's people? Has oil been the cause of conflict in the Middle East?

Book Middle East Oil

    Book Details:
  • Author : Benjamin Shwadran
  • Publisher : Transaction Publishers
  • Release : 1977-01-01
  • ISBN : 9781412849142
  • Pages : 132 pages

Download or read book Middle East Oil written by Benjamin Shwadran and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1977-01-01 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shaped by the emotional climate of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, the controversies between the oil-producing and oil-consuming nations are of major international concern. Shwadran outlines the progressive rise in the power of the oil-producing countries and the decline in the control exercised by the concessionary foreign countries that has culminated in the almost total nationalization of the foreign oil companies. Because of the highly charged atmosphere surrounding the issues and their grave importance on world politics, the problems are, at once, highly difficult to encompass and enormously important to understand. Through a myriad of facts and figures the author sees the underlying patterns with precision. Often narrowly viewed as having only two sides —that of oil producers and consumers—the situation is reflected in this book in all its facets. Seen in this totality of conflicting needs, desires, abilities, and objectives, the Middle East oil crisis takes on the contradictory and explosive nature which has affected us all. Middle East Oil, born of the author's years of scholarship and exposure in the field, describes the problems of the past but, more important, it gives insight into how the problem will manifest itself in the future, and provides a direction for efforts toward a final resolution. Contents: Introduction / From the Six Day War to the End of 1970 / From the Teheran 1971 Agreement to the October 1973 War / The Producers Develop the Oil Industry / The Transporters / Nationalization and Participation / The Arab Oil Embargo / The Efforts of the Consuming Countries / Surpluses and Recycling / Solutions / Bibliography

Book The Oil Companies and the Arab World

Download or read book The Oil Companies and the Arab World written by Giacomo Luciani and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years, vertical integration characterized the international oil industry, with the same company controlling the entire process from crude exploration and production to the retailing. This structure was radically transformed in the 1970s and this book, originally published in 1984, examines whether the dis-integration which resulted was a long-term trend or a temporary phase. It examines the attitude of the major international oil companies, discusses the policies adopted by oil producing and oil importing countries, and the limits of ‘government to government’ deals underlined. The political and strategic implications of re-integration are explored, and relations between oil exporters and importers, and between the USA, Europe and the Arab world discussed.