Oil Reading List

"an inert seal of worked materiality"- Jean-Paul Sartre

The subtitle of Giovanni Arrighi’s The Long Twentieth Century, is “Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times.” There is no industry that quite embodies this description than the oil and gas industry. Struggles over the production, distribution, and maintenence of oil reserves define the storms and fair skies of today’s global trade, a historical process stretching back to the turn of the 20th century. Before I begin publishing some writing on shipping and maritime insurance in the Indian Ocean, I’d like to include a reading list on the oil and gas industry. I will engage in comradely banter with

Rob Ashlar

and

whitesiadbarre

(and to procrastinate on my thesis during Ramadan) by adding this to their lists, before I publish some later entries for this blog (to come, iA).

The light switch is the great fetish of industrial modernity, as one can believe that they can simply turn the power off with a click of the switch. This sentiment, transposed into the banks and cars of today’s world, can be reworked in a slightly different quotation. Today’s discourses on the green transition embraces the fetish of the very concept of energy itself. The branding transformation of oil companies to energy firms, consolidating coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables under the umbrella of electricity (as well as a vast agglomoration of processes including pricing mechanisms, currency supplies, spot market investment, and the list goes on), reveals how vague that term is. The vast infrastructures of logistics, security, and risk, calculable means of management, all derive profits from oil extraction, circultaion, and distribution. All aspects of our consumption, from the potatoes we grow with more petroleum than sunshine to the plastic parts of this laptop, it is all fuelled by the boom and bust cycles of the petroleum industry. We all see like oil companies when we talk about energy in abstract, to paraphrase James Ferguson.

It goes without saying how important this industry is, as one of the principle driving factors of US-centered geopolitical hegemony. I’ll shortly publish some other lists on mining extraction and agriculture going forward, but to explore these dynamics later, we must turn to some readings on the “inert seal of worked materiality” fuelling our everyday existence. These books often hold deeply flawed politics, the issues apparent upon glancing the first few pages. But they provide insights into very specific geographic or corporate-industrial dynamics worth taking seriously. Better read against the grain…

**-favorite

1. Economic Theory:

   1. Marx: Capital vols 1-3, pay close attention to the longest fifteenth chapter of the first volume, Machinery and Large-Scale Industry and in vol III, the chapters on Ground Rent. Read also Marx’s Grundrisse, especially fragment on machines and technology. The Eighteenth Brumaire on the consolidation of the state.

   2. Veblen (1904): Theory of Business Enterprise and (1923): Absentee Ownership

   3. Schumpeter (1911): Theory of Economic Development

   4. J. Robinson (1933): The Economics of Imperfect Competition

   5. Hymer (1960): The International Operations of National Firm

   6. Chandler (1962): Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise & (1977): The Visible Hand & (1990): Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism

   7. H. Odum Jr. (1970): Environment Power and Society

   8. A. Emmanuel (1975): Profit and Crises (the celebrated author among a certain audience has received more acclaim for (1970): Unequal Exchange, P&C is far more important for certain dynamics of the oil industry, concerning business practices, wages, and competition. It is rather telling that he begins this work directly commenting on the causes of the oil crisis)

   9. G. Arrighi (1994): The Long Twentieth Century

   10. Mazen Labban (2013)**: Space, Oil and Capital

   11. R. Baldwin (2016): The Great Convergence (extremely important as the logistics and information revolution is one of the defining features of modern capitalism, extremely utilized within the oil and gas industry)

2. Overview Studies, Corporate Power

   1. Introduction: Hanieh (2024): Crude Capitalism. Decent intro, the rest gives more specificity…

   2. Econ/Scientific overviews:

      1. Clubley (1998): Trading in Oil Futures and Options.

      2. Vaclav Smil (2008): Oil, A Beginner’s Guide

      3. — (2010): Prime Movers of Globalization: Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines

      4. — (2015): Natural Gas: Fuel for the 21st Century.

   3. Corporate History:

      1. Tarbell (1904): History of the Standard Oil Company

      2. Harvey O’Connor (1950)**: History of Oil Workers Intl. Union (CIO) & (1955)**: Empire of Oil & (1962)**: World Crisis in Oil

      3. Hidy (1955): Pioneering in Big Business 1882-1911

      4. Tanzer (1969): The P. E. of International Oil & Underdeveloped Countries

      5. Sampson (1975): The Seven Sisters

      6. Anderson (1975): The Standard-Vacuum Oil Company and United States East Asian Policy, 1933-1941 & (1981): Aramco, the United States, and Saudi Arabia: A Study of the Dynamics of Foreign Oil Policy, 1933-1950

      7. Ferrier and Bamberg (1982, 2009, 2010)**: History of British Petroleum vols I & II, Global Oil (The days when oil companies would hire historians…)

      8. Corley (1983): A history of the Burmah Oil Company

      9. Jones: Banking and Empire in Iran: vols 1 & 2

      10. Howarth (1992): Sea Shell: The Story of Shells British Tanker Fleets 1892-1992

      11. Joonker et al (2007): History of Royal Dutch Shell

      12. Vitalis (2007): America’s Kingdom (Aramco)

      13. Steve Coll (2013): Private Empire & (2017): Taking of Getty Oil

      14. Pratt (2013): Exxon: Transforming Energy 1973-2005

   4. US Geopolitics:

      1. Painter (1986)**: Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Oil Policy, 1941-1954

      2. Steil (2019): The Marshall Plan

      3. McFarland (2020): Oil Powers

      4. Wight (2021): Oil Money

   5. Frank (2007)**: Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia

   6. Huber (2013): Lifeblood (good overview of oil and american life)

   7. Appel, Mason, Watts (eds): Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas

   8. McNally (2017): Crude Volatility: The History and Future of Boom-Bust Oil Prices

   9. Monteiro (2022): Digital Oil: Machineries of Knowing (important on the IT transformations in contemporary oil industry)

3. Arab and Iranian World

   1. Joe Stork (1975)**: Middle East Oil

   2. Bichler & Nitzan (2002): The Global Political Economy of Israel (rather strange and quirky book, but very interesting information on oil/arms/financial nexus that the ZE occupies)

   3. S. Galpern (2009)**: Money, Oil, and Empire in the Middle East: Sterling and Postwar Imperialism, 1944–1971

   4. Iran:

      1. Abrahamian (1982)**: Iran Between Two Revolutions & (2013): The Coup & (2021): Oil Crisis in Iran: from nationalism to coup d 'etat

      2. Davoudi (2021): Persian Petroleum: Oil, Empire and Revolution in Qajar Iran

      3. Shafiee (2018)**: Machineries of Oil: Infrastructural History of BP in Iran

   5. Khaleej:

      1. Vassiliev (2000)**: History of Saudi Arabia

      2. Hegghammer (2010): Jihad in Saudi Arabia

      3. Martini et al (2010): The Outlook for Arab Gulf Cooperation

      4. Wright (2017): Between Dreams and Ghosts & (2024): Unruly Labor

      5. Hanieh (2018)**: Money Markets Monarchies: The GCC and P. E. of the Modern Middle East

      6. Heard (2019)**: Oil Men, Territorial Ambitions and Political Agents: From Pearls to Oil in the Trucial States of the Gulf

      7. Khalili (2020)**: Sinews of War and Trade

      8. alHassan & Lons (2023): Gulf Bailout Diplomacy: Aid as Economic Statecraft in a Turbulent Region

   6. Oil and Nationalism

      1. Primakov (1979)**: Anatomy of the Middle East conflict

      2. Garavini (2019): The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century

      3. Dietrich (2021): Oil Revolution

      4. AlMuhanna (2022): Oil Leaders

4. Latin America, Africa, South Asia

   1. Nigeria:

      1. M. Watts (1983)**: Silent Violence

         • I cannot praise Silent Violence enough, defined and redefined the field of political ecology, major intervention in agrarian studies, environment, development, conflict, so many fields…

      2. — Essays- (2004): Resource curse? governmentality, oil and power in Niger Delta & (2009): Oil, Development, and Politics of the Bottom Billion & (2012): Tale of Two Gulfs: Life, Death, & Dispossession along Two Oil Frontiers

      3. Biersteker (1987): Multinationals, State, and Control of Nigerian Economy

      4. Yates (1996): Rentier state in Africa: oil rent dependency & neocolonialism in Gabon

      5. Omoweh (2005)**: Shell Petroleum Development Company, the State and Underdevelopment of Nigeria's Niger Delta

      6. Siollun (2009)**: Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Coup Culture

   2. Mexico:

      1. Rippy (1972)**: Oil and the Mexican revolution

      2. Brown (1993): Oil and Revolution in Mexico

   3. Venezuela:

      1. McBeth (1983)**: Gomez and the Oil Companies in Venezuela 1908-35

      2. F. Coronil (1997)**: The Magical State

      3. John (1998): From Windfall to Curse

      4. Salas (2009): The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela

      5. Strønen (2017): Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela: The Revolutionary Petro-State

      6. Rossi (2023): Rise and Fall of Oil Nation Venezuela (flawed but alright account on very specific dynamics)

   4. Brazil:

      1. Smith (1976): Oil and Politics in Brazil

      2. Skidmore (1986) Politics in Brazil 1930-64 & (1990): Military Rule in Brazil 1964-85 (for political context of oil discovery and nationalization, and later, counterrevolutionary turn)

      3. Randall (1993): P. E. of Brazilian Oil

      4. Peyerl (2022): The Oil of Brazil: Exploration, Technical Capacity, and Geosciences Teaching (1864-1968)

   5. Hodges (2001): From Afro-Stalinism to Petrodiamond Capitalism (Angola)

   6. J. Ferguson (2005): “Seeing Like an Oil Company”

   7. H. Appel (2019): Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Ecuatorial Guinea

   8. Kikon (2019): Living with Oil and Coal: Resource Politics in NE India

   9. B. Gustafson (2020): Bolivia in the Age of Gas

   10. Riosfrancos (2020): Resource Radicals (Ecuador)

   11. Bhardwaj (2021): The Chinese Shadow on India’s Eastward Engagement

   12. R. Jobson (2024)**: The Petro-state Masquerade (Trinidad & Tobago)

5. “Socialist” World:

   1. USSR, Russia, Central Asia:

      1. Fischer (1926): Oil Imperialism. The International Struggle for Petroleum

      2. T. Gustafson (1989)**: Crisis among plenty: the politics of Soviet energy under Brezhnev and Gorbachev & (2012)**: Wheel of fortune: the battle for oil and power in Russia

      3. Chaqueri (1994): The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920-1921: Birth of a Trauma (much more of a history of the USSR)

      4. Sanchez-Sibony (2014): Red Globalization & (2023)**: The Soviet Union and the Construction of the Global Market: Energy and the Ascent of Finance in Cold War Europe, 1964–1971.

      5. Sicotte (2017, unpub diss): Baku: Violence Identity and Oil, 1905-1927

         (for context on Soviet Azerbaijan, see Suny (1972), The Baku Commune)

      6. (Paired)** Zubok (2021): Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union & Bartel (2022): Triumph of Broken Promises

   2. China:

      1. Wang (1999): China’s Oil Industry and Market

      2. Hou (2018): Building for Oil: Daqing and Formation of the Chinese Socialist State

      3. Zhang (2020): China-Gulf Oil Cooperation Under the Belt and Road Initiative

6. Oil, Spills, Green Futures:

   1. Pulver (2004, unpub diss): Power in the Public Sphere: The Battles Between Oil Companies and Environmental Groups in the UN Climate Change Negotiations, 1991-2003

   2. Gramling and Freudenburg (2010): Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster

   3. Estes (2019): Our history is the future

   4. Horowitz (2020): Katrina: A History, 1915–2015

   5. Bosworth (2022): Pipeline Populism

7. Conflict and Insurgency:

   1. Peter Dale Scott (2003): Drugs, Oil and War & (2015): American Deep State

   2. HRW (2003): Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights

   3. Pelletiere: (2004): Iraq and the International Oil System & (2007): Losing Iraq & (2016): Oil and the Kurdish Question

   4. Beaubeauf (2007): The Strategic Petroleum Reserve: U.S. Energy Security and Oil Politics, 1975-2005

   5. Johnstone et al (2010): Foundations of the Islamic State: Management, Money, and Terror in Iraq, 2005–2010

   6. Patey (2014): The New Kings of Crude: China, India, and the Global Struggle for Oil in Sudan and South Sudan

   7. Omolade Adunbi (2015): Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria

   8. Thomas Sommer-Houdeville (2017, unpub diss): Remaking Iraq: Neoliberalism and a System of Violence after the US invasion​, 2003-2011

   9. Ekeh (2024): Crude Oil Theft in Nigeria: A Colluded Conspiracy and the Way Forward for Sustainable Oil and Gas Industry

   10. Crawford (2024): “Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War” (available here)

8. Blogs to follow:

   1. The Crude Chronicles

   2. Another oil and gas tourist