One of the major policy challenges for the US following the events of September 11 2001 and their aftermaths has been how to reduce the country's dependence on oil from the Middle East. There have been suggestions of policy shifts in Washington in which Africa's share of US oil imports will rise dramatically over the next few years. Nigeria, one of the world's largest producers of crude oil, is believed to have more than 30 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, mostly in the Niger Delta areas. Despite this huge reserve however, crude supplies from the country remains at best erratic largely because of conflicts, violence and the rise of ethnic militias in the oil-producing areas of the country. The book explores the causes, sources and dynamics of the conflicts between the oil-bearing communities and oil companies in Nigeria. Taking its point of departure from the social interaction paradigm, it argues that the conflicts in the Niger Delta are embedded in the triangular relationship between the government, the oil companies and the host communities. ________ Austin Onuoha, studied History at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria and did graduate studies in Conflict Transformations at the Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA. He has worked on issues of human rights and conflict resolution in, and around the Niger Delta of Nigeria for over 10 years, including as the Executive Secretary/Head of Conflict Resolution at the Human Rights Commission, Abakaliki, Nigeria. He was also a consultant to the Centre for Social and Corporate Responsibility (CSCR) based in Nigeria's oil capital, Port Harcourt. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and USA.

Many people in the world today believe Bush's war against Saddam Hussein is only about oil. Iraq has the second biggest petroleum reserves in the Middle East, and America's relations with its prime supplier Saudi Arabia have turned sour in the wake of 9/11. Invading Iraq, so many argue, is merely colonising an oil field. Oil has transformed the world and remains the most important resource of our age. It has made the wealth of millions of people - from Venezuela to Norway via the Persian Gulf - and holds their futures in its fortunes. The Middle East is the earth's greatest petroleum depot. It is also the most explosive region in the world today. Now more than ever, with the global economy under severe threat, oil is of prime geopolitical concern. Crude Power provides a comprehensive analysis both of the world's dependency on Middle Eastern oil, and of the very dangerous way politics and economics play themselves out in the oil game - as producers and consumers tug at each others' interests. It is a tug of war: Oystein Noreng explains what all concerned are fighting for. Placing OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) into its wider world context, he examines in detail how shifting oil prices affect everything from international trade balances to inflation rates. In the current political climate of the Middle East and Central Asia, with anti-Americanism and the threat of terrorism in such countries as Saudi Arabia running high, oil holds the future of the world economy as well as thousands of lives in its hands. Crude Power is an indispensable book for anyone concerned with the fate of the world today, and that most important of issues: the interplay of power and money in the Middle East and beyond.

The petroleum industry is among the most lucrative and most important in the world, and its impact within the realm of international politics is tremendous (although it can be overstated). Taking a well-balanced and objective approach to the complicated web of political and economic threads that make up the fabric of the oil industry, Falola and Genova introduce the most salient aspects in clear language, offering cogent and up-to-date information about the countries, companies, international organizations, and people who shape the contemporary history of the black gold.

The relationship of international politics and the global oil industry affects everyone but is understood by few. Taking a well-balanced and objective approach to deconstructing this intricate web for those unfamiliar with the industry, Falola and Genova introduce the major players in the field, offering cogent and up-to-date information about the countries, companies, organizations, and people who shape the contemporary history of oil. They break down the essentials, describing the discovery process, the different types of oil, and the various processes by which oil gets to the market. Then they provide a brief history of the major oil-producing countries, followed by a discussion of OPEC and international efforts to control the price and supply of oil. After setting the stage, they introduce the most salient political issues that are influenced by oil, namely environmental protection, human rights, and economic development. Finally, a look at each of seven major oil exporters--Iraq, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela--demonstrates that the black gold can be both a blessing and a curse for the countries that produce it.

Despite the need to learn how to exploit alternative energy sources before the oil runs out, we will continue to be dependent on oil for the foreseeable future. Today's oil demands are not only generated by such obvious activities as gassing up our cars or powering our aircraft, but also from the ubiquitous technological gadgets that have infiltrated our daily lives. From computer monitors to CDs, from cell phones to the petroleum-generated materials used in our shoes and sweaters, our reliance on oil continues to grow. Because price and supply are highly dependent on political events in distant countries, it is essential for American consumers to understand the intricacies of this complex subject. Falola and Genova demystify the industry and invite us to investigate more deeply this vital resource.

"The real story of global oil over the past twenty-five years is not about the spillover effects of Palestinians fighting Israelis, or terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Iraq's stormy relationship with Kuwait. It is not even about periodic small- and large-scale U.S. attacks on Iraq. Rather, the real story is about longer-term developments that have changed the international relations of the Middle East, politics at the global level, and world oil markets. These developments have increased oil stability." from the Introduction

Thirty years after OAPEC shattered world markets for oil, the Western world remains profoundly dependent on foreign, particularly Middle Eastern, sources of petroleum. U.S. political rhetoric is suffused with claims about the vulnerability caused by this dependence. Hence, many political analysts assume that a search for stability of petroleum supplies is an important element of contemporary American foreign policy.

Steve A. Yetiv argues that common assumptions about oil markets are wrong. Although prices remain volatile, Yetiv's account portrays a world market in petroleum products far more benign and predictable than the one to which we are accustomed. In Crude Awakenings, he identifies and analyzes real and potential threats to the global energy supply, including wars, revolutions, coups, dangerous alliances, oil embargoes, Islamic radicalism, and transnational terrorism. However, he also shows how some of these threats have been mitigated and how global oil security has been reinforced."

Essays covering five case studies to gain an insight into the unique Latin American approach to petroleum resources and industries.

Whatever happened to OPEC? This book unravels the puzzle that has confounded all the experts: why did countries with such major divergences in size, population, resources, economic structures, governmental systems, culture, and ethnicity all follow the same path to political and economic development, and with such wretched results? How did OPEC members benefit from their three trillion-dollar windfall? Where did all that money go? This is the first book that charts OPEC's rise, decline, and virtual disappearance as a commercial force in the world until its recent half-hearted re-emergence in the face of collapsed oil prices.

A legend among oilmen, Tom Slick was an independent operator in the truest sense. His office was his buggy during his early days of wildcatting the Mid-Continent oil field around 1910. And even after great success brought him to posher surroundings in an Oklahoma City office suite, his style remained hands-on. His impromptu deals were often brokered on street corners and over the telephone in his typical laconic style. Well into the 1920s he was the last of a breed who had no stock holders or board members to answer to, and instead "worked out of his hip pocket." Slick's extraordinary rise paralleled that of the modern petroleum industry. He began his career in the oil fields of western Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the American oil business. Before 1910, he headed west, traveling with his father and brother to the fields of Kansas to work as contract drillers. Slick met with failure in these early years, as he moved on to Oklahoma in an attempt to locate oil. In 1912 he received the financial backing to drill one more well, which turned out to be the discovery well for the vast Cushing Field. This amazing success was followed by more discoveries of fields - a frenzy of acquiring, drilling, then selling that in 1929 culminated with Slick's sale of his Oklahoma holdings in the Prairie Oil and Gas Company - up until that time, the largest sale of oil properties by an individual. In this first biography of Tom Slick, Ray Miles fleshes out the man who, despite his legendary drive - and the high-profile nature of the oil business - was exceedingly private and withdrawn. Miles relies on newspaper accounts, court and business records, correspondence, and personal interviews with family, friends, and associates to render a portrait of one of the most successful and colorful, yet elusive, businessmen of his day.

**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** A ground-breaking investigation into the oil and gas industry, international corruption and world politics. Oil. Corrupt? Yes. Unimaginably lucrative? Of course. But, the enemy of democracy? Blowout is the oil and gas industry as we've never seen it before, as told by America's most incisive political journalist, Rachel Maddow. A blackly comic journey from Washington to Siberia, to deep within the earth's crust and the icy Arctic seas, it reveals not just the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas but why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. This is our final wake-up call: to stop subsidizing oil and gas, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world's most destructive industry before it destroys our democracy 'Each page in Blowout is a revelation into the depth of corruption and greed that is infused into the international economy' David Lammy, MP

This text analyses the causes and far-reaching consequences of Iran's oil nationalization during the 1950s, focusing on the extensive and misguided involvement of the United States and Great Britain.

Exploiting Seismic Waveforms introduces a range of recent developments in seismology including the application of correlation techniques, understanding of multi-scale heterogeneity and the extraction of structure and source information by seismic waveform inversion. It provides a full treatment of correlation methods for seismic noise and event signals, and develops inverse methods for both sources and structure. Higher frequency components of seismograms are frequently neglected, or removed by filtering, but they contain information about seismic structure on scales that cannot be revealed by seismic tomography. Sufficient computational resources are now available for waveform inversion for 3-D structure to be a practical procedure and this book describes suitable algorithms and examples reflecting current best practice. Intended for students and researchers in seismology, this book provides a physical understanding of seismic waveforms and the way that different aspects of the seismic wavefield are revealed by the way that seismic data are handled.

"In the United States, proposals for gasoline tax hikes have consistently met with broad-based congressional opposition. Although such taxes are a common and effective method of conserving energy in other industrialized nations, U.S. policy has traditionally relied on regulatory programs rather than fuel taxes to promote energy efficiency in automotive transportation. This book examines both the political causes and the economic effects of this idiosyncratic policy preference. Moderating the consumption and importation of oil has been an explicit goal of the United States over the past twenty years. Pietro S. Nivola and Robert W. Crandall argue that a higher levy on gasoline would be a more efficient way of achieving this goal than current automotive fuel economy standards. In fact, they find that an additional excise of less than twenty-five cents per gallon over the past dozen years would have conserved more oil than has the existing policy of administering gas mileage requirements for new passenger vehicles. And such a tax, they maintain, would not be as detrimental to the economy as opponents fear, nor as regressive as they claim. Why, then, is there such a strong national resistance to a fuel tax in the United States? And why is there less resistance in other countries? The authors examine the development of motor-fuel excises in Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and Canada, and explain the historical and political factors that have led to different national policy orientations. Turning their attention back to the United States, Nivola and Crandall show how regulatory measures have fallen short of their goal and why political barriers to bolder taxation of gasoline remain formidable. They conclude by offering suggestions for new directions in U.S. energy policy at the federal, state, and local level. "

In the last quarter of the twentieth century the United States is both more involved in the global political economy and less able to shape its course. In this lucid and theoretically sophiticated book, Ikenberry focuses on the oil price shocks of 1973-74 and 1979, which placed extraordinary new burdens on governments worldwide and partiuclarly on that of the United States.

The Polar North is known to be home to large gas and oil reserves and its positionholds signifi cant trading and military advantages, yet the maritime boundaries of the region remain ill-defined. In the twenty-first century the Arctic is undergoing profound change. As the sea ice melts, a result of accelerating climate change, global governance has become vital. In this first of three volumes, the latest research and analysis from the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, the world's leading Arctic research body, is brought together. Arctic Governance: Law and Politics investigates the legal and political order of the Polar North, focusing on governance structures and the Law of the Sea. Are the current mechanisms at work effective? Are the Arctic states' interests really clashing, or is the atmosphere of a more cooperative nature? Skilfully delineating policy in the region and analysing the consequences of treaty agreements, Arctic Governance's uncovering of a rather orderly 'Arctic race' will become an indispensable contribution to contemporary International Relations concerning the Polar North.

Geosequestration involves the deep geological storage of carbon dioxide from major industrial sources, providing a potential solution for reducing the rate of increase of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and mitigating climate change. This volume provides an overview of the major geophysical techniques and analysis methods for monitoring the movement and predictability of carbon dioxide plumes underground. Comprising chapters from eminent researchers, the book is illustrated with practical examples and case studies of active projects and government initiatives, and discusses their successes and remaining challenges. A key case study from Norway demonstrates how governments and other stake-holders could estimate storage capacity and design storage projects that meet the requirements of regulatory authorities. Presenting reasons for embracing geosequestration, technical best practice for carbon management, and outlooks for the future, this volume provides a key reference for academic researchers, industry practitioners and graduate students looking to gain insight into subsurface carbon management.

"Oil," writes Ruth Sheldon Knowles, "is the most hazardous, expensive, heartbreaking gambling game in the world." And, as this book dramatically proves, the men who have been the gamblers of the American oil business have been some of the most colorful and fantastic personalities in our history.

"The Greatest Gamblers "is the story of our remarkable oilmen and the vast industry they have created-from its simple beginnings in 1859 at Titusville, Pennsylvania, to the big-business oil operations of today. Here are the wildcatters, the prospectors, the scientists, the hunch players (Mrs. Knowles points out that independent oilmen have discovered more than three-fourths of America's oil fields). Here you will meet "unlucky" Dad Joiner, whose fortunes changed only in his seventies when a worthless ten-acre tract of Texas wasteland proved the key to one of America's two biggest oil fields; and H. 1. Hunt, who parlayed an oil lease he won at a poker game into an oil business that made him one of the richest men in the United States.

Harry Sinclair ... Tom Slick ... Mike Benedum ... Everette DeGolyer ... Charles Canfield ... Edward Doheny -- the pages of this book are crowded with the stories of such men, their tough boom towns, their dogged persistence and wild successes, and the brutal competition they faced.

But "The Greatest Gambler "is also the story of a prospectors' rush that has become an organized industry. An absorbing portion of the book tells how the industry has found new uses for petroleum and its by products, and how this sometimes involved as much heartbreak as prospecting. There were the ships that exploded when oilmen first tried to market petroleum as marine fuel, the locomotive roundhouse that blew up when they first tried to convert railroads to oil. Mrs. Knowles discusses knowledgeably the present predicament of the petroleum industry and what is necessary to find and develop America's remaining great oil and gas resources. "The Greatest Gamblers "is a lively and authoritative account of what is probably the most fascinating and adventurous business of all.

In January 1969, the blowout on an offshore oil platform off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and the resulting oil spill proved to be a transformative event in pollution control and the nascent environmental activism movement. It accelerated the advancement of federal government policies and would change the way the federal government managed environmental pollution. Over the next three years, Congress worked to pass laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act, and revolutionized the way that the United States dealt with environmental pollution. At the same time, scientists developed methods to detect chemical pollution that had been discharged into rivers and streams by industrial facilities. Slick Policy presents an original and in-depth history of the 1969 Santa Barbara spill. Teresa Sabol Spezio provides a background of water pollution control, government oversight of federally-funded projects, and chemical detection methods in place prior to the spill. She then shows how scientists and politicians used public outrage over the spill to implement wide-ranging changes to federal environmental and science policy, and demonstrates the advancements to offshore oil drilling, pollution technology, and water protection law that resulted from these actions.

The availability of low-cost energy from fossil fuels - in particular oil - has been the driving force behind postwar global economic growth, such that the petroleum industry has some of the world's largest companies. This book examines the economics of the oil and gas industry, from exploration, development and production, to transportation, refining and marketing. At each stage of the value chain, the key economic costs and considerations are presented in order to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the workings of the industry. The book examines some of the unique economic challenges the industry faces, including negotiating international contracts with host countries (to gain access to hydrocarbons), managing the risks of recovery, implementing cross-border pipelines, dealing with huge variations in the taxation of refined products, and reacting to the effect of price control and subsidization in the OPEC nations which can create massive volatility in pricing. The search for low-carbon fuels, the impact of shale gas, the prospect of finite reserves, and the global political realities of the competing demands of oil-importing and oil-exporting countries are shown to make the sector high risk, but the economic rewards can be huge.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is one of the most recognizable acronyms among international organizations. It is mainly associated with the 'oil shock' of 1973 when prices of petroleum quadrupled and industrialized countries and consumers were forced to face the limits of their development model. This is the first history of OPEC and of its members written by a professional historian. It carries the reader from the formation of the first petrostate in the world, Venezuela in the late 1920s, to the global ascent of petrostates and OPEC during the 1970s, to their crisis in the late-1980s and early- 1990s. Formed in 1960, OPEC was the first international organization of the Global South. It was perceived as acting as the economic 'spearhead' of the Global South and acquired a role that went far beyond the realm of oil politics. Petrostates such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran were (and continue to be) key regional actors, and their enduring cooperation, defying wide political and cultural differences and even wars, speaks to the centrality of natural resources in the history of the twentieth century, and to the underlying conflict between producers and consumers of these natural resources.

In Chapter One, L. Khotseng and G. Vaivars provide an overview of the recent advances in electrocatalysts for direct methanol fuel cells for both anode and cathode catalysts in order to present direct methanol fuel cells as an alternative power source for portable devices. In Chapter Two, Nobuyoshi Nakagawa, Mohammad Ali Abdelkareem, Takuya Tsujiguchi, and Mohd Shahbudin Masdar propose a fuel supply layer using a porous carbon plate (PCP) for DMFCs allowing for the use of high methanol concentrations. The proposed layer is comprised of a thin PCP layer, as well as a gap layer that has a mechanism to supply the methanol as a vapor. Next, Chapter Three by D.S. Falcao, J. P. Pereira, and A.M.F.R. Pinto review the multiphase flow in fuel cells modelling approaches while also reviewing the flow visualisation techniques for flow analysis in fuel cells. Chapter Four by B.A. Braz, V.B. Oliveira, and A.M.F.R. Pinto closes the book by discussing the key work that has been done to improve the passive DMFC performance and providing a review on the most recent developments in passive DMFCs.

In Energy without Conscience David McDermott Hughes investigates why climate change has yet to be seen as a moral issue. He examines the forces that render the use of fossil fuels ordinary and therefore exempt from ethical evaluation. Hughes centers his analysis on Trinidad and Tobago, which is the world's oldest petro-state, having drilled the first continuously producing oil well in 1866. Marrying historical research with interviews with Trinidadian petroleum scientists, policymakers, technicians, and managers, he draws parallels between Trinidad's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave labor energy economy and its contemporary oil industry. Hughes shows how both forms of energy rely upon a complicity that absolves producers and consumers from acknowledging the immoral nature of each. He passionately argues that like slavery, producing oil is a moral choice and that oil is at its most dangerous when it is accepted as an ordinary part of everyday life. Only by rejecting arguments that oil is economically, politically, and technologically necessary, and by acknowledging our complicity in an immoral system, can we stem the damage being done to the planet.

This encyclopedia presents important research on Cuba. Some of the topics discussed herein include Cuba's policies and relations with the United States; Cuba broadcasting; human rights; offshore oil development; legislative restrictions limiting the normalization of relations; and the reengagement of detainees formerly held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

While writing his autobiography, Jean Paul Getty - then perhaps the world's richest man - hoped it would be the final verdict on himself, on his many friends and associates, and on his times. Regrettably, it proved to be so: Getty died in 1976 as "As I See It" was going to press. Now reissued with a number of new illustrations, this autobiography introduces the famed tycoon to a new generation of readers. Known largely for his fabled wealth, J. Paul Getty was highly educated, competent in six languages, a world traveller, and a committed collector of art. Getty describes how he amassed his staggering fortune, discusses the prospects of democracy, lists the seven key points success-oriented men should know about women, and recounts undergraduate conversations at Oxford with his good friend "David", the future King Edward of England. The cast of characters who populate his intimate anecdotes reads like a "Who's Who" of the 20th century: Winston Churchill, Clara Bow, Nelson Rockefeller, Bernard Berenson, Bela Lugosi, Jacqueline Onassis, Richard Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charlie Chaplin, and hundreds more. He discusses with frankness his several marriages and liaisons and speaks about his notorious stinginess and the often-bizarre problems confronted by the impossibly wealthy.

Over the past 10 years, surging crude oil and petroleum product prices have increased oil and gas industry revenues and generated record profits, particularly for the top five major integrated companies (also known as the "super-majors"): Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Conoco/Phillips. These companies, which reported a predominant share of those profits, generated more than $100 billion in profits on nearly $1.5 trillion of revenues in 2007. From 2003 to 2007, revenues increased by 51%; net income (profits) increased by 85%. Being largely price-driven, with no increase in output, and with little new production resulting from increased oil industry investment, many believe that a portion of the increased oil industry income over this period represents a windfall and unearned gain, i.e., income not earned by any additional effort on the part of the firms, but due primarily to record crude oil prices, which are set in the world oil marketplace. Numerous bills have been introduced in the Congress over this period to impose a windfall profits tax (WPT) on oil. This book discusses these options.