(A collection of gas station signs in Tulsa, Oklahoma)

The book is about the Oil Industry, its start and development and how the industry affected the world around it. I was really interested in it because even though I am not in the oil industry, I am in the energy industry and have been for 40 years this May. I started out working summers, chopping weeds and fixing flowline leaks for Mobil Oil Corporation as a roustabout in the Wasson Field in the Permian Basin of west Texas. The energy industry has employed me for forty years.

(Stripper Oil Well in Osage County, Oklahoma)

The first thing I learned is that oil saved the whales. What! Yep. I didn’t know that oil was first used to make kerosene for lighting our homes and businesses. Oil replaced whale oil. The whales were being hunted to extinction in order to get their oil for lighting. So next time you start cussing the oil industry, just remember to thank them for the whales that are left.

(I am not sure what this is but it sure is a manly piece of equipment pertaining to drilling oil wells)

The book focuses mainly on the business and political side of the business rather than the technical and geological side. So he writes about the John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Companies and goes into some depth on the sharp business practices. I’ve seen some sharp business practices in my time by Rockefeller took them to a new level. The book goes into other companies also, many of whom I have worked for in my career. There really and truly was a global contest going on between companies trying to keep and grow their oil business.

(Fellow citizens, pipeline construction union members advocating for Keystone XL at Corps of Engineer hearing in Tulsa)

This of course led to the huge integrated companies that sourced their oil in the Middle East and Venezuela and used that oil in their refineries and then fought each other for market share at the corner gasoline station. When I started work for Mobil it was in the last days of when they and other majors controlled oil production in the Middle East.

(Fellow citizen protesting Keystone XL at a Corps of Engineers hearing in Tulsa)

The book spends a lot of time on the buildup to the first oil crisis where the Middle East countries who had the oil realized that they were basically giving this valuable commodity away plus the realized that they could withhold oil to punish countries they didn’t have the “right” policies toward Israel. And then of course the whole Iranian debacle where the Shah was deposed and the hostages and the humiliation of the United States as we danced the dance we were told to dance.

(Getting ready for massive hydraulic fracturing of a well in the Colony Wash Field of Oklahoma)

And then later, the recession of the 80’s that caused oil consumption to plummet and the OPEC countries outdid each other in discounting their oil prices to maintain market share. And then when Saudi Arabia got tired of being the swing producer and then jacked up their output and flooded the world with cheap crude oil. That led to the oil energy recession of the 80’s where tens of thousands of my fellow energy employees were driven out of the industry. But what the heck, gas was below a buck.

(Cryogenic Natural Gas Processing Plant in the Mississippi Lime field of Oklahoma)

The book is good and it is thorough but it is controversial. Some people don’t like it because they say that Yergin is an apologist for the oil industry. I am not sure what that means because he writes about the intrigues and schemes both legal and otherwise by the captains of this industry and doesn’t glorify them or admire them for those things at all. They really are hair raising and if one wonders why we have all our anti-trust and insider trading laws this book would be a good place to start.

(Increased density drilling in the Cana Woodford Shale field of Oklahoma,)

I am friends with a lot of people who are not in the industry and it is no big secret that the industry is held in low regard. It gets blamed for a lot the ills. And some of it is justified. I’ll tell you that that not one drop of oil would get produced if somebody didn’t buy it. World oil demand is over 100 million barrels of oil a day. I happen to know that a 100 tank car railroad train of oil holds 66,000 barrels of oil. The world is burning enough oil every day to fill out 1515 of these trains.

(http://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/global_111211.php)

And that is why the industry is drilling wells here, there and everywhere. They are doing it so that you and I can buy gasoline relatively cheaply. I am not one that thinks that drillers should be allowed to drill anywhere they want. I think that our country through our legislators and government should set the rules and hold the drillers accountable for violating them.

Oooooops, sorry. I got on an editorial. 

The book is good. But it is a grind to read. I loved it. I give it five stars.