Oil

Polity Resources Series

by Gavin Bridge, Philippe Le Billon

Oil pulses through our daily lives. It is the plastic we touch, the food we eat, and the way we move. Oil politics in the twentieth century was about the management of abundance, state power, and market growth. The legacy of this age of plenty includes declining conventional oil reserves, volatile prices, climate change, and enduring poverty in many oil-rich countries. The politics of oil are now at a turning point, and its future will not be like its past.  In this in-depth primer to one of the world’s most significant industries, authors Gavin Bridge and Philippe Le Billon take a fresh look at the contemporary political economy of oil. Going beyond simple assertions of peak oil and an oil curse, they point to an industry reordered by global shifts in demand toward Asia, growing reliance on unconventional reserves, international commitments to reduce carbon emissions, a growing campaign for fossil fuel divestment, and violent political struggles in many producer states. As a new geopolitics of oil emerges, the need for effective global oil governance becomes imperative. Highlighting the growing influence of civil society and attentive to the efforts of firms and states to craft new institutions, this fully updated second edition identifies the challenges and opportunities to curtail price volatility, curb demand and the growth of dirty oil, decarbonize energy systems, and improve governance in oil-producing countries.

Genres: Politics

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 10, 2012

Reviews

[Olivia]

need to stop kidding myself that i'm actually gonna finish this lol but i did read almost all of it for oil class so i'm giving myself the points because it was boring as shit

[Ryan Madden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I borrowed this from the library, I was using it as a primer on the oil industry. The library doesn't have Oil 101 which probably would've been a tad better, but this is a geopolitics of oil, and so it talks a lot about the issues surrounding oil which are also pretty important to understand these days I think. It's a bit dated even though it's from 2012. The perspective today would be different. It's also a tad dry even though I quite enjoyed it. Has a nice further reading section at the back.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really just a textbook on the complex nature of the world's most coveted natural resource. The authors explore nearly every aspect of oil, from creating, harvesting, refining, transporting, trading and marketing it. Sounds like it would be interesting, but it's really, really, really dry, like a martini with too much vermouth or like any science textbook you've ever read. The charts and graphs are poorly displayed and are basically pointless/useless, but at least they break up the monotony of the text, in which seemingly every other word on the page is oil.