The global economy needs it. Nations laid their foundations upon it. It has yielded untold riches. But it has also proven a ruinous curse: wars have been declared over it; tyrants and corporate greed have thrived on it; and lives and nature have been ravaged — often irreparably — by it. Oil.
It’s running out, quicker than we thought, New York Times Magazine contributing reporter Peter Maass argues in Crude World. But after reading his expose of the evils, intended or otherwise, of the oil industry, this development might not be such a bad thing.
In this highly entertaining investigation, Maass, whose previous book was about war in the Balkans, takes us from the palatial oil ministries of the Middle East to the heart of darkness in Equatorial Guinea, with stops in the war-ravaged streets of Iraq, the militia-infested jungles of the Niger Delta, a cut-throat, spy-infested hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan, and the environmental catastrophe in Ecuador’s Oriente.
No less fascinating are the individuals we meet who are caught in the unforgiving wheels of the oil industry. We meet jet-setting star attractions like Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who reassures an audience in Washington that Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves are plentiful; and Matthew Simon, a former adviser to former US president George W. Bush who would very much be part of the oil nomenklatura were it not for his belief that “the American dream and the world as we know it are on the verge of falling apart” because Naimi is wrong. Guerrilla leaders, crusading lawyers, oil executives from all the best-known oil giants and ordinary soldiers, all get sucked in by the folly of oil, and Maass provides us an intimate portrait of their motivations. The full spectrum of emotions, from greed to fear, alienation to desire, inhabit this bizarre world; appropriately, they are used as titles for each section. (Interestingly, almost every person we meet is male, which, from a sociological perspective, says
a lot about the
oil sector.)
Page after page, greed is joined at the hip with tragedy and human suffering as dictators like President Teodoro Oniang of Equatorial Guinea — possibly “the most brutalized country on Earth” — plunder their countries, often with the assistance of Big Oil and the West. In Oniang’s case, the plunder (he bought, for US$55 million, a Boeing 737 that comes with gold-plated bathroom fixtures) and laundering was facilitated by an unscrupulous little bank in Washington called
Riggs Bank.
Next on the list is Nigeria, which, though it is the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter, fares little better. Despite more than US$400 billion in oil revenues in recent decades, nine out of 10 Nigerian live on less than US$2 a day and one child out of five dies before the age of five. Eighty percent of oil wealth in Nigeria, the World Bank tells us, has gone to 1 percent of the population. (In Nigeria and elsewhere, oil firms often do not hire locals to do construction or other menial jobs, and import construction material rather than purchase it locally.)
Decades of low-intensity warfare — the result of this criminally inequitable distribution of wealth and severe environmental damage — and tens of thousands of deaths later, the Niger Delta is no closer today to resolution than it was half a century ago. In fact, new, increasingly violent groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), are emerging and promise decades of nothing but violence.
As Maass argues, if most of the world’s oil reserves were located in developed and stable countries like Norway and Canada, where corruption is low and rule of law well-established, oil would not be such a debilitating commodity. But sadly for its victims — many of whom we meet in this book —
fate, or geography, would have
it otherwise.
In many of the cases explored, oil-rich countries suffer from what has come to be known as the “Dutch disease,” which can be roughly characterized as a country’s over-reliance on a single or a handful of primary resources for its revenues. In other words, even when oil wealth isn’t plundered, the sudden influx of money generated by the discovery oil can, in the long term, turn into a curse (another unfortunate consequence of the Dutch disease is that the large revenue created by the primary resource tends to drive up the currency, which makes locally produced goods more expensive for export and can consequently wipe out other sectors of the economy).
Countries with an over-reliance on oil, such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, among others, will often embark on massive and hugely expensive infrastructure projects (or, as in Venezuela’s case, a Bolivarian revolution fueled by oil money). As long as oil prices are relatively high, they will be able to afford it. But as the recent global financial crisis so painfully showed us, when the economy slows down, so does oil consumption and demand, which drives prices down. The result? A fabulous airport in the Saudi desert has turned into a hollow castle in the sand, and schemes similar to ones that foundered years ago are being unleashed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Despite the utterly depressing tone of the first 200 pages, Crude World concludes on a more optimistic — if perhaps a little naive — note, with mention of the opportunities created by renewable energy and programs, such as Publish What You Pay, to encourage governments and oil firms to become more transparent. Whether these would be sufficient to diminish our dependence on oil and bring good governance to Big Oil and oil-inebriated governments, however, remains to be seen and will be contingent on human nature’s ability to transcend its most basic desires. Maass’ book does little to convince us that this is possible.
Crude World is a great read, but would have been more complete if it had had a section on the impact that China’s entry in the oil business — especially in Africa — will have on those countries both fortunate and unfortunate enough to have rivers of black gold flowing through their veins.
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had
RSS