Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline

340 Pages·2007·4.79 MB·English

by  Lisa Margonelli

"If you drive a car, you must read this book,
but please not at the same time."—MARY ROACH, author of Stiff
OIL ON
T HE B R A IN
ADVENTURES FROM THE PUMP
1 TO THE P I P E L I NE
S Lis
Lisa Margonelli
"Lisa Margonelli has a rare and precious talent. She has drawn
a wonderfully readable portrait of the fascinating and surprisingly
little-known human face of Big Oil."
— SIMON WINCHESTER
"Oil on the Brain could be called 'The Petro-economy for Dummies'
— especially hardcore dummies like me who insist on being entertained as
well as educated. From the corner gas station to the oil fields of Nigeria, there
couldn't be a better traveling companion than Margonelli. She's fast,
fearless, funny, and a brilliant observer."
— BARBARA EHRENREICH
"Oilon the Brain is hugely enjoyable, compulsively readable,
and brilliantly reported. I feared reading a book on oil would be akin
to being told 'eat your carrots.' But from page one, Lisa Margonelli
made oil into brain candy, and kept it so till the end."
— Po BRONSON
"Very few people are smart enough to tackle a subject as
complicated as world oil, and of those people, I would wager that
not one of them could do it with the humor and crackle and delight
that Margonelli brings to bear. If you drive a car, you must
read this book, but please not at the same time."
—MARY ROACH
U.S. $26.oo/Canada $35.00
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 tliis gas come from? Lisa Margonelli's
desire to learn took her on a 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 econ
omy of oil, Margonelli finds a series of stark warn
ing signs for American drivers.
Lisa MargO ne Hi is currently an Irvine
Fellow at the New America Foundation. She
has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Wired,
Business 2.0, Discover, and Jane, and was the recipi
ent of a Sundance Institute Fellowship and an
excellence in journalism award from the Northern
California Society of Professional Journalists. She
is based in Oakland, California.
www.oilonthebrain.com
www.nanatalese.com
JACKET DESIGN ©JAMIE KEENAN
Printed in the U.S.A.
OIL ON THE BRAIN

OIL ON THE BRAIN
Adventures from the
Pump to the Pipeline
LISAMARGONELLI
NAN A. TALESE / DOUBLEDAY
New York London Toronto Sydney Auckland
PUBLISHED BY NAN A. TALESE
AN IMPRINT OF DOUBLEDAY
Copyright © 2007 by Lisa Margonelli
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of
The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York.
www.nanatalese.com
DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Parts of Chapter 11 previously appeared in Wired as
"China's Next Cultural Revolution," April 2005.
Frontispiece: Image of the song "Oil on the Brain" (on page ii)
is courtesy of Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,
Drake Well Museum Collection, Titusville, Pennsylvania.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Margonelli, Lisa.
Oil on the brain : adventures from the pump to the pipeine / Lisa Margonelli
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
(alk. paper) 1. Petroleum industry and trade. I. Title.
HD9560.5.M3185 2007
338.2'7282—dc22 2006020789
ISBN: 978-0-385-51145-2,/
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
I 2 3 4 5 6 7 89 IO
FIRST EDITION
To my grandmothers, Alice and Helene,
and the wonderful big cars they used to drive