The Secret World of Oil

The Secret World of Oil

by Ken Silverstein
The Secret World of Oil

The Secret World of Oil

by Ken Silverstein

Paperback(Reprint)

$34.95 
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Overview

The oil industry provides the lifeblood of modern civilization, and bestselling books have been written about the industry and even individual companies in it, like ExxonMobil. But the modern oil industry is an amazingly shady meeting ground of fixers, gangsters, dictators, competing governments, and multinational corporations, and until now, no book has set out to tell the story of this largely hidden world.

The global fleet of some 11,000 tankers—that's tripled during the past decade—moves approximately 2 billion metric tons of oil annually. And every stage of the route, from discovery to consumption, is tainted by corruption and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public.

Based on trips to New York, Washington, Houston, London, Paris, Geneva, Phnom Penh, Dakar, Lagos, Baku, and Moscow, among other far-flung locals, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of a shadowy Baku-based trader; a high-flying London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who has to choose one of his eleven luxury vehicles when he heads out to party in Los Angeles. Supported by funding from the prestigious Open Society, this is both an entertaining global travelogue and a major work of investigative reporting.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781781688670
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 05/05/2015
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 690,388
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ken Silverstein is a Senior Investigative Reporter with First Look Media. He has been a Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and at Open Society Foundations. He served as Washington Editor of Harper’s Magazine from 2006 to 2010. Previously on the staff of the Los Angeles Times, Silverstein has also written for Mother Jones, Wallpaper, Washington Monthly, the Nation, Slate, Salon, and many other publications.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Secret World of Oil 1

1 The Fixers: Ely Calil 13

2 The Dictators: Teodorin Obiang 55

3 The Traders: Glencore 101

4 The Gatekeepers: Bretton Sciaroni 141

5 The Flacks: Tony Blair 167

6 The Lobbyists: Louisiana 199

7 Coda: The Hustler: Neil Bush 261

Notes 271

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