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Oil: Money, Politics, And Power In The 21st Century (2010)

by Tom Bower(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0446547980 (ISBN13: 9780446547987)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Grand Central Publishing

review 1: This book was a bit too close to home. I have worked as an oil trader for nearly 30 years in the US and Singapore. Many of the characters and sources are familiar and, in some cases, business associates. I feel compelled to admit that what drew me to this book was not the cheap bargain basement price. I learned that an old business competitor/adversary was a major source for this book (in fact, there is an entire chapter devoted him). His colleagues disclosed to me that the book infuriated him. After reading it, I have to agree. We'll keep it anonymous but it was not kind to him. I am grateful the author overlooked me as well. The book takes aim at some of the dodgier executives in the oil business, notably the Russian oligarchs and fugitive oil trader Marc Rich.... more The author details how growing resource nationalism has prompted government heads like Putin and Chavez to renege on promises and rewrite contracts. The book is not kind to former CEOs like Lee Raymond of Exxon, Phil Watts of Shell and John Browne of BP, but then, as an oil industry partisan, I have to admit that many of the criticisms here are accurate and deserved.There are a few books out there that try to describe the world of oil trading ..Metal Men by Craig Copetas, the King of Oil by Daniel Amman and Rigged by Ben Mezrich. Each of those books have flaws (it is not clear whether the Mezrich book is factual or a roman a clef). This book does a better job of catching the spirit and energy of an oil trading room. The author contacted many rank and file traders who laid out their strategies and market approaches. He lays out the strategies behind each "squeeze" in language that lay persons can follow. In this respect, this book was quite helpful. I was also gratified to read the author's lengthy panegyric on Andy Hall, the phenomenal trading boss of Phibro who called the markets right and went mega-long in the early 2000s. The author credits Hall's business success not only to his willingness to bet his hunches but included his voracious reading habits. My Good Books count is nudging towards 500 (at least the books I remember reading) but I could use a payday like Andy Hall's.
review 2: There's a lot of information in this one, but it's poorly arranged. What could have been an excellent examination of the people involved at the top of the oil world and the way they have impacted recent history (Bower is focused on roughly 1980 onward), is bogged down by constantly shifting timelines and narratives that leave the book difficult to follow. It's a shame, because the stories he tells are quite dramatic and offer an illuminating look at the impact oil and those who produce it have on our daily lives. But by not arranging things chronologically, it becomes very hard to remember who did what, when they did it and why. Readers are often unable to consider events in the light of what preceded them, because the earlier events frequently aren't relayed until later in the book.For those obsessed with books about oil (and I'm one of them) there's more than enough here to warrant reading this one, but it's more of a struggle than it needed to be. Had he followed Daniel Yergin's narrative flow in his epic work, "The Prize," Bower could have produced a worthy successor, a book that clearly documented the role of oil in history and current events. Instead he's turned out a hodgepodge. It's too bad his editor didn't steer him right on that. less

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