archive

The petroleum sublime

Peter Jan Honigsberg (USF): Conflict of Interest that Led to the Gulf Oil Disaster. A review of Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took it Down by Stanley Reed and Alison Fitzgerald. A review of Blowout in the Gulf: The BP Oil Spill Disaster and the Future of Energy in America by William R. Freudenburg and Robert Gramling. Crude Awakening: From Deepwater Horizon to industrial architecture, the iconography of the petroleum sublime. The U.S. can take a number of steps to reduce oil consumption and to create liquid fuels that can substitute for oil. When we demand cheap petrol, we are demanding disaster. Demand for oil is driving exploration in ever more unlikely frontiers — are the benefits worth the risks? International oil companies are racing to develop new oilfields in the Arctic, but developing the vast reserves could be far more expensive than first thought. A review of Seizing Power: The Grab for Global Oil Wealth by Robert Slater. Is Saudi Arabia running out of oil? (and more) Saudi Arabia's social lubricant: To buy stability, Saudi Aramco — a 21st century corporation in a premodern monarchy — must keep the oil flowing. Oil and Trouble: George Monbiot on why western governments won’t support democracy in Saudi Arabia. An interview with Robert Scott on the effect of protests in the Middle East on oil prices. With the upheaval across the Middle East throwing the global energy market in turmoil, here are five questions that all oil traders are frantically trying to answer. Jeff Colgan claims that states with large oil and gas resources as well as what he calls revolutionary agendas are more likely than “stable” oil producers or non-producing states to start disputes with other states. A review of The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market by Leah McGrath Goodman. The collapse of the old oil order: Michael T. Klare on how the petroleum will end. A review of Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World.