This book has an amazing amount of content and is incredibly useful for anybody studying the last 150 years of capitalist history. Starting from the development at the end of the 19th Century of the American oil industry, he shows how oil has shaped the world.

It was first mainly used as a heating oil but with the development of transport and then other forms of power it became the predominant product in the world. Oil also represented the beginning of the US as a world power.

Rockefeller’s Standard Oil was the beginning of the process. Although there were many smaller US firms, he created a fully integrated firm that did all the transportation, processing and distribution. In order to do this he had to overcome the US laws on monopolies. He did this on a state by state basis and then moved to the state that charged the least tax. He was followed in this by other oil firms and also other industries.

Other countries’ oil firms developed on similar lines to the point where there were 7 world firms dominating, 5 US, one British and one Dutch. As other fields were discovered these oil firms moved in, bringing corruption with them. For example the huge Venezuela fields were dominated by US firms, and they paid very little for the oil. The money went to the president who became the richest man in Latin America. This was a pattern followed in other countries.

German patents stolen

The development of the petrochemical industry slowly transformed all production. Germany had the foremost chemical companies in the world. They had vast numbers of patents. After the first world war American companies ignored these, and just used the German research. A similar thing happened after the Second World War, where the US  simply took all the documents from the German research.

The big oil companies were now dominating the petrochemical industry, e.g. with Dupont in the US. Before the war there huge Russian oilfields discovered. This oil was heavily used during the war, but after it was a different question. A huge new National Oil Company (NOC) was established.

In the meantime the British and Europeans were dominating the Middle East, paying very little for Iranian oil, and even less for Iraq’s where the ruler they had installed was charging hardly anything.The people of the Middle East were starting to revolt, through leaders like Egypt’s Nasser. Slowly state run NOCs were developing.The Americans were still dominating and Hanieh shows how they were subsidised by the American taxpayer.

But the world was getting fed up with the US fixing oil prices, often by secret international meetings. Consequently more countries were going their own way, although the US still dominated. It had huge oilfields in Africa and so was getting massive profits, and corrupting the world.

The book goes on to show how the political situation in Russia was changed by Russian oil oligarchs.

There is a very interesting section on China and Saudi Arabia explaining how they are both investing in each other and oil is a big factor in this. Of  course it is China that is using vast amounts of petrochemicals, as it is the workshop of the world. In the meantime the fact that oil is traded in dollars has bolstered the US dollar, with the help of the Middle East.

I would certainly recommend this book.