This book provides a study of the transformation of the Latin American oil system from one in which the international oil companies dominated to one which is dominated by the main state oil companies, and an account of how some of the more important of the state companies have operated. This comprehensive guide to the evolution of the Latin American oil system combines in one volume a synthesis of material from secondary sources and original research and thus provides an invaluable reference for all concerned with the history and economy of Latin America and with the development and functioning of the international oil industry.

Seismic hazard and risk analyses underpin the loadings prescribed by engineering design codes, the decisions by asset owners to retrofit structures, the pricing of insurance policies, and many other activities. This is a comprehensive overview of the principles and procedures behind seismic hazard and risk analysis. It enables readers to understand best practises and future research directions. Early chapters cover the essential elements and concepts of seismic hazard and risk analysis, while later chapters shift focus to more advanced topics. Each chapter includes worked examples and problem sets for which full solutions are provided online. Appendices provide relevant background in probability and statistics. Computer codes are also available online to help replicate specific calculations and demonstrate the implementation of various methods. This is a valuable reference for upper level students and practitioners in civil engineering, and earth scientists interested in engineering seismology.

This book, first published in 2007, presents research by leading scholars to an international audience of academics, business executives, and policy makers. This research is presented in two clusters. The first cluster of studies explores four cross-cutting topics, including surveys of the changes in industry structure, corporate strategies, plant technologies, governmental policies, finance, and corporate governance. The second cluster of studies comprises nine country surveys that examine the experiences of representative nations in chemical production and foreign trade. By combining the similar historical cases of a few nations (such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland), the authors are able to deal with eleven chemical-producing nations, including all of the leaders in this area as well as some of the important followers.

Shelving Guide: Environmental Engineering In-situ burning is recognized as a viable alternative for cleaning up oil spills on land and water. It can rapidly reduce the volume of spilled oil and eliminate the need to collect, store, transport, and dispose of recovered oil, and can also shorten the response time to a spill, thus reducing the chances that the spill will spread on the water surface or further into land. This book will serve as a comprehensive reference for all aspects of in-situ burning of oil spills and include the scientific aspects of the burning process and the related effects, as well as practical information about the procedures to be followed and equipment required for carrying out an in-situ burn. Features Serves as a complete source of information on in-situ burning as well as practical guide on how to implement the procedures. Explains procedures for burning in different situations, including on water, land, and ice. Provides information on worker health and safety precautions during burning. Covers several different types of emissions, their environmental fate, and how to monitor them. Includes numerous illustrative case studies.

The first biography of Jackson Barnett, who gained unexpected wealth from oil found on his property. This book explores how control of his fortune was violently contested by his guardian, the state of Oklahoma, the Baptist Church, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and an adventuress who kidnapped and married him. Coming into national prominence as a case of Bureau of Indian Affairs mismanagement of Indian property, the litigation over Barnett's wealth lasted two decades and stimulated Congress to make long-overdue reforms in its policies towards Indians. Highlighting the paradoxical role played by the federal government as both purported protector and pilferer of Indian money, and replete with many of the major agents in twentieth-century Native American history, this remarkable story is not only captivating in its own right but highly symbolic of America's diseased and corrupt national Indian policy.
The World's Richest Indian was the winner of the Sierra Prize of the Western Association of Women Historians.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Middle East and North Africa were perceived as being exceptionally successful, but now the region is viewed as a resounding economic and social failure. Islam is not only a religion, but also a political and social project. A major pretext of this work is to demonstrate how the tensions within Islamic movements feed directly into the economic, social, political, historical and religious arena of the region, and vice versa. An introductory chapter sets the context of the book. The core chapters of the book comprise an in-depth examination of the varied forms of oil revenue abuse. For examples, the past mismanagement of the tremendous wealth provided by oil. Following Islamic beliefs, revenue from oil should not finance wasteful consumption, but used instead for public welfare. Abstaining from interest calculations, there should be a case for keeping more oil in the ground. Indeed, oil has also stifled industrial development, and with declining oil revenues, the conflict between civilian and military priorities intensifies. While western interests have promoted arms spending, high population-growth expenditure reinforces the reality of the count-down to the post-oil era upon the Middle Eastern and North African oil exporters. So far the governments seem unwilling or unable to adapt and react. Furthermore, in the past oil has been used as a substitute for democracy. While the large oil revenues of the 1970s and early 1980s strengthened the position of autocratic rulers and weakened the private sector,repressive regimes have made Islam a source of criticism and opposition for the Western world. Following on from this, the book then looks forward to the problem of uniting the divergent interests in the spheres of oil and Islam into a cohesive whole. The book proposes that ideally Islamic governments would synchronise the depletion of oil reserves with investment in new productive assets. Islamic governments could also find ways to combine private, domestic and foreign interests in the oil industry. The main readership for this book will be policy-makers and professionals involved in development issues for Middle Eastern and North African affairs, and those with an interest in oil politics and Islamic studies.

The close dovetailing between the interests of oil trusts and the policies of diplomats was one of the most significant and absorbing political developments of 1910-1920. This book examines the growing importance of oil to Soviet Russia at the start of the twentieth century and the impact this had on the geo-politics of the region.

This book explores the relationship between oil pollution laws and environmental justice by comparing and contrasting the United States and Nigeria. Critically, this book not only examines the fluidity of oil pollutions laws but also how effective or ineffective enforcement can be when viewed through the lens of environmental justice. Using Nigeria as a case study and drawing upon examples from the United States, it examines the legal and institutional challenges impacting upon the effective enforcement of laws and provides a contrasting view of developed and developing countries. Focusing on the oil and gas industry, the book discusses the laws and international acceptable standards (IAS) in these industries, the principles behind their application, the existing barriers to their effective implementation, and how to overcome those barriers. Utilising an environmental justice framework, the book demonstrates the synergy between policy-making, human rights, and justice in oil-producing regions as well as addressing the importance of protecting the rights of minorities. Through a comparative analysis of the United States and Nigeria, this book draws out enforcement approaches and mechanisms for tackling oil-related pollution with a view to reducing environmental injustice in developing countries. Examining the role of NGOs in pursuing environmental justice matters, the book showed the regional courts as one avenue of overcoming the enforcement challenges faced by the developing countries. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental law, environmental justice, minorities' rights, business and human rights, energy law, and natural resource governance.

Gathering the right kind and the right amount of information is crucial for any decision-making process. This book presents a unified framework for assessing the value of potential data gathering schemes by integrating spatial modelling and decision analysis, with a focus on the Earth sciences. The authors discuss the value of imperfect versus perfect information, and the value of total versus partial information, where only subsets of the data are acquired. Concepts are illustrated using a suite of quantitative tools from decision analysis, such as decision trees and influence diagrams, as well as models for continuous and discrete dependent spatial variables, including Bayesian networks, Markov random fields, Gaussian processes, and multiple-point geostatistics. Unique in scope, this book is of interest to students, researchers and industry professionals in the Earth and environmental sciences, who use applied statistics and decision analysis techniques, and particularly to those working in petroleum, mining, and environmental geoscience.

Buckle propagation is a problem unique to offshore pipelines, in which the local collapse of a locally weakened section of the pipe initiates a collapse that propagates at high speed catastrophically flattening the line by kilometers. The lowest pressure that can sustain the propagation of the collapse, the propagation pressure, is only a small fraction of the collapse pressure of the intact pipe. The large difference between these two pressures requires that pipelines be designed on the collapse pressure, and the extent of the potential catastrophic damage suffered is limited by the periodic introduction of buckle arrestors to the line. Volume 2 of the book series Mechanics of Offshore Pipelines addresses the major aspects of buckle propagation including its initiation, establishment of the propagation pressure, and the dynamics of buckle propagation. Buckle propagation under tension, in pipe-in-pipe pipeline systems, and confined buckle propagation in tubulars such as grouted casing are examined in dedicated chapters. Three chapters deal with the performance of the most commonly used buckle arrestors under both quasi-static and dynamic buckle propagation. Each of these problems is studied through experiments, analyses, and large-scale numerical simulations. The results are used to provide empirical design equations and design guidelines on how to mitigate the effects of buckle propagation.

What lies beneath the ground? Our poor eyesight cannot penetrate even an inch into the soil, so for centuries, fortune-seekers have tried every way imaginable to see below the surface. Whether searching for mineral veins, groundwater, or buried treasure, people have looked for ways to avoid the plodding and backbreaking process of digging. They have followed dreams, seers, dowsing rods, and advice from the spirit world. When petroleum became an item of commerce, oil-hunters took to all these methods. Many built homemade inventions called doodlebugs, which they said could detect underground oil. It took a while, but science finally came up with its own toolbox of oil-finding methods in the early twentieth century. Finding oil is still expensive and risky, however. The old ways? They are mostly gone, but a few oil-dowsers still stride across fields with rod or pendulum, and no doubt people still consult dreams and psychics. And don’t pretend that you yourself haven’t wondered if that dowser might be onto something, or if that famous psychic can really tell where there is oil, or if that inventor stumbled onto a better way to detect underground oil. Of course you have. History is written by the victors, and scientists won over the oil industry—rightly so. But their accounts give short shrift to the rich history of less traditional ways to find oil. Although ignored, the records of nonscientific methods and their contributions to the oil business are well worthy of study. Lacking in science, they are rich in humanity. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear . . . wait, scratch that . . . these things are still going on. Join us in a visit to a place where dreams, seers, and spooks are taken seriously, where forked twigs dip toward oil pools and homemade oil-finding gizmos blink or beep with the promise of riches tucked just below the surface of the known world.

The perfect primer for both the layperson and the engineer, for the new hire and the old hand, describing, in easy-to-understand language, one of the biggest and most lucrative industries in the world. There is only one substance known to mankind that can cause wars, influence global economies, and make entire countries rich: petroleum. One teaspoon of the stuff carries enough energy to power a ton truck up a hill. It's in the news every single day, it influences our lives in ways that we cannot fathom, and it is the most important commodity in the world. But how much does the average person, even the average engineer, know about it? This book describes the petroleum industry, in easy-to-understand language, for both the layperson and engineer alike. From the economics of searching for oil and gas to the pitfalls of drilling and production, getting it out of the ground, into pipelines, into refineries, and, finally, into your gas tank, this book covers the petroleum industry like no other treatment before. There is coverage of pricing and the economics of this very important resource, as well, which is useful not only to engineers, but to economists and, really, anyone who uses it. From jet fuel to gasoline to natural gas and plastics, petroleum is one of the integral products of our lives. We are practically bathed it in from birth, our food is protected by it, and it even has healing properties. Learn all about this incredible substance and its fascinating history and highly debated future. An Introduction to Petroleum Technology, Economics, and Politics: * Gives a thorough summary of the petroleum and natural gas industry, from prospect to production to pipeline * New technologies, such as directional and underbalanced drilling, are covered, in easy-to-understand language * Useful not only for newcomers and laypersons, but for engineers and students, particularly those for whom English is a second language * Examines the basics of pricing and valuation

"The Politics of Oil-Producer Cooperation" is a comprehensive study of the behavior of political actors in the international oil market since 1971. In this study, Dag Harald Claes seeks to answer the question of what determines the cooperative behavior among oil-producing countries, and he also shows the benefits of approaching an empirical topic from several levels of analysis. Claes provides a case study demonstrating the problems of collective action in international politics, and he discusses multi-level approaches in studies of international relations, and international political economy.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence Techniques in the Petroleum Industry gives engineers a critical resource to help them understand the machine learning that will solve specific engineering challenges. The reference begins with fundamentals, covering preprocessing of data, types of intelligent models, and training and optimization algorithms. The book moves on to methodically address artificial intelligence technology and applications by the upstream sector, covering exploration, drilling, reservoir and production engineering. Final sections cover current gaps and future challenges.

Every day, millions of Americans get behind the wheels of their car, peacefully unaware of where the gas that powers their vehicle originates. Only transportation and industrial uses consume significant quantities of oil in the United States, with transportation by far the dominant user. Electric power generated by oil is virtually nonexistent, while residential and commercial heating uses for oil continue to fall. In Less Oil or More Caskets: The National Security Argument for Moving Away From Oil, Greg Ballard profiles the history of US troops in the Middle East the last forty plus years and the impact the oil industry has had on our international politics. More than a recap, Ballard makes a call to action for American politicians and citizens to change their ideas about transportation in America. By changing the fuel in our vehicles and embracing new technologies in transportation, he argues that within two decades our nation and the world could be on the path to freedom from the current dependence on oil-rich nations. This would preclude the United States from having to send troops overseas to protect the supply of oil for the entire world, saving both dollars and lives. .

This vast compilation references thousands of gas pump globes made for the major oil companies, from P-to-U (Pennzoil through Utoco) and their affiliates, as well as generic globes, and globes from independent companies and foreign firms. Over 1000 color photographs illustrate this voluminous text. Affiliated oil companies are listed under the major companies to which they are tied. A useful alphabetical cross reference to affiliated companies is provided to assist readers in quickly locating the smaller firms. This text also guides the reader through the distinctions between different gas pump globe types produced, lists reproduction globes manufactured over the years, and explains how the original, and highly collectible, gas pump globes of years gone by are valued in the collector's market. An index is also provided. Finally, values are provided for both the globes displayed in photographs and for the thousands that are listed in the text.

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year on Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Republics The Russian oil industry-which vies with Saudi Arabia as the world's largest producer and exporter of oil, providing nearly 12 percent of the global supply-is facing mounting problems that could send shock waves through the Russian economy and worldwide. Wheel of Fortune provides an authoritative account of this vital industry from the last years of communism to its uncertain future. Tracking the interdependence among Russia's oil industry, politics, and economy, Thane Gustafson shows how the stakes extend beyond international energy security to include the potential threat of a destabilized Russia. "Few have studied the Russian oil and gas industry longer or with a broader political perspective than Gustafson. The result is this superb book, which is not merely a fascinating, subtle history of the industry since the Soviet Union's collapse but also the single most revealing work on Russian politics and economics published in the last several years." -Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs "The history of Russia's oil industry since the collapse of communism is the history of the country itself. There can be few better guides to this terrain than Thane Gustafson." -Neil Buckley, Financial Times

This book constructs a history of Newtown Creek's industrial expansion during the period that began in the 1840s and continued through the early years of the 20th century. In that period, the production of reagent chemicals and refined materials near the center of modern-day New York City grew steadily, as practitioners, alert to European advances in chemical science, developed and applied increasingly sophisticated technologies. Innovations in methods of production, ready access to domestic and international markets, and sustained growth in volumes of production at Newtown Creek in the late 19th century had profound consequences for the practice of industrial chemistry in the United States and for the economic vitality of the City of New York. Industrial practice progressed from the recovery of animal tissues to the refining of crude petroleum and the production of high-purity copper and other metals from mineral ores. With attention to each company's technical expertise and principal products, this book examines the interdependence of the chemicals- and materials-producing industries that thrived along Newtown Creek's shores. The author recounts Newtown Creek's industrial history alongside the stories of well-known New Yorkers - Peter Cooper, Charles Pratt, John D. and William Rockefeller - and other less celebrated or less notorious characters. This book provides a valuable account of New York's history in the manufacture of reagent chemicals and refined fuels and metals and will appeal to researchers, scholars and historians interested in the early years of industrial chemistry.

Is there a low-carbon future for the oil industry? Faced with compelling new geological evidence, the petroleum industry can no longer ignore the consequences of climate change brought on by consumption of its products. Yet the global community will continue to burn fossil fuels as we manage the transition to a low-carbon economy. As a geologist, oil man, academic and erstwhile politician, Bryan Lovell is uniquely well placed to describe the tensions accompanying the gradual greening of the petroleum industry over the last decade. He describes how, given the right lead from government, the oil industry could be environmental saviors, not villains, playing a crucial role in stabilizing emissions through the capture and underground storage of carbon dioxide. Challenging prejudices of both the environmentalists and the oil industry, Lovell ultimately assigns responsibility to us as consumers and our elected governments, highlighting the need for decisive leadership and urgent action to establish an international framework of policy and regulation. Bryan Lovell comments in a US News & World Report article on Exxon's potential to 'go green' - click here Video from a performance of a folk song inspired by the book, written and performed by Mike Excell at the Woodman Pub, Ware, UK. (Recording courtesy of Tony Dawes.)

Microorganisms can be both beneficial and harmful to the oil and gas industry and therefore there is an increasing need for the oil industry to characterize, quantify and monitor microbial communities in real time. Oilfield Microbiology offers a fundamental insight into how molecular microbiological methods have enabled researchers in the field to analyze and quantify in situ microbial communities and their activities in response to changing environmental conditions. Such information is fundamental to the oil industry to employ more directed, cost-effective strategies to prevent the major problems associated with deleterious microbial activities (e.g., souring and biocorrosion), as well as to encourage beneficial microbe activity (e.g. oil bioremediation). The aim of the book is to understand how the technological advances in molecular microbiological methods over the last two decades are now being utilized by the oil industry to address the key issues faced by the sector. This book contains a comprehensive collection of chapters written by invited experts in the field from academia and industry and provides a solid foundation of the importance of microbes to the oil and gas industry. It is aimed at microbial ecologists, molecular biologists, operators, engineers, chemists, and academics involved in the sector.

Over the past two decades, "fracking" has led to a revolution in shale gas production. For some, shale gas promised economic opportunities, cheaper energy bills, and an alternative to coal. For others, shale gas was fool's gold. Critics contend that the shale boom has occurred in a regulatory Wild West, that the response has been fractured and ineffective, or that the harmful environmental and health consequences exceed the benefits from shale gas production. The Political Economy of Fracking argues that the criticism of the shale revolution has been misplaced. The authors use insights from a diversity of perspectives in political economy to understand why the shale boom occurred, who won in the race for shale, and who was left behind. The book explains how private property rights and entrepreneurs led to the shale boom. It contends that polycentric governance, which encourages a diversity of regulatory responses, is a virtue because it generates knowledge about the most appropriate ways to regulate shale development. Private property rights and political institutions that provide for local self-governance also helped to ensure that the benefits of shale gas production exceeded its costs. The authors make the case for fracking shale gas using evidence from shale-producing countries from around the world, comparing them to those that have fallen behind in the shale race. They show that private property rights and markets have been a source of innovation and dynamism and that a diversity of regulatory responses is appropriate to govern shale gas development. This book is insightful reading for academics and professionals interested in the shale boom, the fracking industry in general, and regulatory policy.

Firm-to-firm relationships, along with the overall structure of industry, have changed markedly over the past decades. Replacing the model of vertical integration with one of global business, firms have started to outsource more by using a wider global network. At the same time, they have begun to increase their control and coordination along the value chain to remain competitive, blurring the boundaries between companies. Understanding the nature of the firm and its role in coordinating the supply chain will help firms to better define global competitive strategies.. The challenges that lie ahead for global business render obsolete the traditional model of procuring each service without long-term supply chain management. Current trends suggest that in the future there will be even deeper supply chain integration in most industries. The Nature of the Firm in the Oil Industry aims to facilitate the understanding of 'the firm' via the analysis of the specific relationship between international oil companies, which are among the world's biggest firms and which act as 'core system integrators', and the oil services companies, which help to find, extract, produce and distribute oil along the petroleum industry supply chain. This relationship serves as an example of deep integration by core system integrators and provides insights into the change in the nature of the firm in the era of modern globalization. Aimed at researchers and academics, The Nature of the Firm in the Oil Industry offers a thorough examination of this relationship in an effort to shed light on the nature of the firm, both in the oil industry and in global business today. It is a humble attempt to better understand the firm in a crucial industry.

This book provides a study of the transformation of the Latin American oil system from one in which the international oil companies dominated to one which is dominated by the main state oil companies, and an account of how some of the more important of the state companies have operated. This comprehensive guide to the evolution of the Latin American oil system combines in one volume a synthesis of material from secondary sources and original research and thus provides an invaluable reference for all concerned with the history and economy of Latin America and with the development and functioning of the international oil industry.

The key focus of the book is on engineering aspects of the subject field Updated, comprehensive text covering offshore drilling, production and field development and offers complete coverage of offshore oil and gas operations. Also, key maintenance issues like pigging, corrosion, subsidence are discussed.

Building on original research into the petroleum industry and on the theory of crimes of globalization, this book introduces the concept of Market Criminology: the criminology of preventable market-generated harms and the criminogenic effects of market rationality in variegated forms of capitalism. Ifeanyi Ezeonu explores the ascendance of the fundamentalist form of market economy in Nigeria; the complicity of the state political and security apparatuses in the corporate expropriation of the country's petroleum resource wealth; the deleterious effects of this neoliberal architecture on the local population, as well as community resistance strategies over the years. This book offers a major contribution to research on state-corporate crime and the crimes of the powerful. Key reading for scholars and students in the areas of criminology, international political economy and sociology, this book will also be rich resource for researchers and non-governmental agencies working in the areas of environmental protection, human rights and sustainable development in the Global South, especially the Sub-Saharan Africa.