Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline | 
|  | | | Title: | Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline | | Author: | Lisa Margonelli | | Publisher: | Nan A. Talese | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 30 January, 2007 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0385511450 / 9780385511452 | | List Price: | $26.00 | | You Save: | $18.50 | | Amazon Price: | $7.50 (via Amazon marketplace seller) | | | |
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Product Description
Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industry—the people, economies, and pipelines that bring us petroleum, brilliantly illuminating a world we encounter every day.
Americans buy ten thousand gallons of gasoline a second, without giving it much of a thought. Where does all this gas come from? Lisa Margonelli’s desire to learn took her on a one-hundred thousand mile journey from her local gas station to oil fields half a world away. In search of the truth behind the myths, she wriggled her way into some of the most off-limits places on earth: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the New York Mercantile Exchange’s crude oil market, oil fields from Venezuela, to Texas, to Chad, and even an Iranian oil platform where the United States fought a forgotten one-day battle.
In a story by turns surreal and alarming, Margonelli meets lonely workers on a Texas drilling rig, an oil analyst who almost gave birth on the NYMEX trading floor, Chadian villagers who are said to wander the oil fields in the guise of lions, a Nigerian warlord who changed the world price of oil with a single cell phone call, and Shanghai bureaucrats who dream of creating a new Detroit.
Deftly piecing together the mammoth economy of oil, Margonelli finds a series of stark warning signs for American drivers.
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Customer Reviews:
• Fluffy Descriptive About Oil People: A Good Try 15 August, 2008
Not much really here. Author Margonelli tries to put a recognizable face on the economics and politics of oil, but I'm not sure I want one. She examines how the effects of the business entangle gas station owners, oil distributors, refinery workers, drilling rig personnel. The effort sets out to first-hand experience "Oil Adventures From..." one sector to the other. Presumably, the oil connection among them is important to all of us as drivers; but she leaves us flat as she relates, so often in soft tones and flowery descriptives, the personal side of each of the participants, just as planned. How does she do this?
--By visiting actual sites, interviewing, gathering information, taking notes, nosingaround, as a good reporter might...but overall, she comes up with flimsy, rather so-what results.
This no in-depth, investigation of how/why oil gets from there to here or how prices actually get set. It probably wasn't intended to be that way, but you don't know that 'till your finished. Instead, it's a quiet, low-ley drama of vague inner turmoil, interpersonal struggles, sob stories, political escapades, emotion, excuses and other personal minutia mostly unrelated to the mechanisms that actually drive oil companies,the government energy offices, auto manufacturers and the consumers at the pump.
Expect to read of detailed workings of "oil" and its effect on cultures around the world? Not here. You get instead sketchy current and historical perspectives of distant 3rd-world, oil-rich countries...and, when closer to home, movie-like scripts on the "human side" of the business, presented in a lovely style that would do soap opera writers proud. No doubt the author's got a pleasant, flowing writing style
(maybe more suited for a novel), but it's annoyingly out of place in a book designed to reveal what we, as drivers, need to know about oil, oil companies, oil countries and the complex mechanics of getting oil as gas to a nearby pump.
She visits Nigeria, Iran, Venezuela in first-hand efforts to bring out her point, ...but by the time she's described her having tea with some high official of Chad, interest is gone. Taking herself and her book too seriously, she puts a useless, literary glow on her travels...as in Iran, where she describes the scene this way:
"Below us, the Gulf glistens as if it's made of grayish,
green jelly. The rippling waves form unexpectant
herringbone patterns, and sometimes the shadow of our
helicopter appears below. The moisture in the air reflects
sunlight so that we seem to be flying through illuminated
cotton. A little fishing boat shaped like a curled slipper,
or maybe a melon rind, appears and disappears below us."
[Page 219] As reader, this is all quite pretty to imagine...but come on! Green jelly? Lisa, you should have stuck with Sgt. Friday's strategy for getting to the bottom of things: "Just the facts, m'am. Just the facts," please! Instead, the author's facts are forever mixed in with with needless, distracting, descriptives (like the above)...often making the read cumbersome and slow-going.
Regarding China (She was there, too.), Margonelli spends her time describing the genius engineering faces she met who raved about new hydrogen-cell cars they're developing, like the Aspire and "a little yellow car shaped like an egg." These will, they say, revolutionize the car industry and put them on the Big Map, making China THE Great World Power. In passing, she mentions how Shell and GM are involved...but
doesn't get past the surface interests of these two stealth players. Incidentally,unlike the chapters on Venezuela, Chad, Iran, Nigeria, author Lisa oddly makes only minor references to China's oil industry. There's nothing about: who controls it, how it controls, whom it effects...topics this reader was looking forward to getting to. --Wonder why "oil," of all things, was almost entirely left out of her China picture....
A lightweight read is not what you'd expect from the eye-catching cover title. The book gets high on fancy descriptive, but stays low on purposeful focus. Each chapter seems without conclusion. Awkwardly, too, the chapters together have no unifying theme...as we get no across-the-board reason for all the location hopping she's done to put the book together. What Margonelli was getting at is anybody's guess...other than it's people who work in the business. (!) After expending, by the author's own casual admission, 3000 gallons of gasoline in her travels to discover the human side of the oil industry, she's come up with a faceless yawn. Although occasionally interesting reading, I found I really don't care much to learn about individual oil folk. In this day of
high-tide pump prices and slow-moving inflation, this reader'd much rather get to know "why," "how," "where." --Definitely, not the "who."
[--But if, on the other hand, the oil "Who" is what you're really after, you might definitely enjoy the read....]
- Reviewed by customer ID: A28S9X79VS6ZDM
• The Real Cost Of Filling Up Your Gas Tank. 14 January, 2008
Like countless Americans, you pull up to a pump and begin the drudgery of filling your car up with gas (while watching the numbers tick higher and ever higher). As you leave, you can't help but shake your fist at the station. Under your breath you damn the brazen oil companies and their obscene profits.
Lisa Margonelli takes the reader on a long journey through the serpentine infrastructure of mighty oil. Along the way, Margonelli describes and uncovers the irony, the blood politics, the sheer oppressive scope of what it takes to get oil from point A to point B: A sort of reverse engineering to dispirited communities, hopeful venues, nations on the brink of crippling crisis and even great fortunes. From somewhere far, far away and remote to your swollen gas tank.
Aside from spending time in New York, California and Texas, Margonelli treks her way to Chad, Venezuela, Niger, Iran, and China.
You can't have your oil and the price of that fill-up without some history; most of it is boom and bust, bloody, contentious and conniving. The price of gas reflects all these things and more: A convoluted national infrastructure, involvement with petty warlords, a dubious foreign policy, and environmental impact. We love our cars and our roads to somewhere. The price to get to that "somewhere" is something to contemplate in more ways than one.
There is a chapter on the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) which I will admit I knew some of. Margonelli goes into greater detail and I did learn a thing or two. I found it to be very interesting. A chapter on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where oil is traded, is also very informative and revealing.
Overall, I appreciated Margonelli's balanced and vivid writing style. I found her to be fair and straight-forward.
This book is highly recommended.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3C5964KWXNG9C
• Superb Breadth, Well Researched, A Must Read! 20 July, 2008
This book starts right at home, and slowly moves farther and farther away, finally ending up in China. It looks at the workings, psychology, and economics of our national addiction--gasoline. It shows, unbiased, the implications of US oil hegemony on our country, the third world, and covers what is happening in China, which will forever change the global oil market. If you are curious about why oil prices are so high, this book gives you the background needed to come to the conversation and understand what is happening. It is too bad this book wasn't finished a year and a half later so the more recent events would be included, I am looking forward to the second edition.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ARQ4B2B1XKNCA
• Where Will The Next Conflict Arise 28 October, 2007
Lisa Margonelli has done an outstanding job of weaving a cultural line from our commuter-car gas tanks to the dozens of oil producing regions around the globe. What is presaged here through hundreds of 'extreme' interviews is true again - an overwhelming challenge is faced by historic players in the development game, given rising stakes and awakening societies. Lisa's often amusing global tour penetrates the walls of oil-state compounds around the world, breaks thru cultural barriers outside the walls, and brings it all home in a polished journal. If you need a reason to lay-off the gas pedal - this book packs plenty - read it and start seeing the world in a whole new way!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2PVVSZU40NIN8
• A Serious But Enjoyable Analysis Of A Facinating Industry! 30 December, 2007
Don't be put off by the frivolous title. This is a really well-written account of a young lady's travels and adventures as she (and we) learn about nearly every aspect of the oil industry.
Ms. Margonelli somehow managed to charm her way into interviews (lasting in some cases days and weeks) with figures including Nigerian warlords, Iranian oil engineers, and even the legendary Michel Halbouty. These are intermingled with accounts of exploding electricity boxes, death-defying rides on Nigerian motorbike taxis, fearless walks in Tehran narrowly avoiding maniac car drivers, etc. But there are also clear explanations of the economics and engineering of oil, from the NYMEX to an oil field in Chad, with a huge number of footnotes referencing sources like the WSJ, NY Times, and UN and World Bank reports.
I would roughly categorize the book as "Maureen Dowd meets Daniel Yergen" (with apologies to both of whom I am a big fan...)
- Reviewed by customer ID: A12Z51AKE527PO
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