Saturday November 21, 2009
The truth about oil
Review by ABBY WONG
Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
Author: Peter Maass
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
WE live in a world that is painfully ironic, more so if it concerns oil. Nations go to war feigning as guardians of democracy and liberators of human sufferings, but what they are truly fighting for is oil.
Some countries are blessed with an abundance of oil, yet their people go hungry, while others use their oil revenue for religious deeds but end up breeding wide and far-reaching fundamentalism that today threatens our security and peace.
First world preaches reduction of carbon emission but avert their eyes from contamination in the drilling grounds of third world’s oil reserves.
Welcome to the real world. Since the discovery of oil, western superpowers have made a mess of our world. Oil companies have polluted our sea and atmosphere and kings and governments have plundered the nations. Man has taken this precious commodity for granted.
As Peter Maass puts it in his new book Crude World, the world of oil is one of scarcity, plunder, rot, contamination, fear, greed and desire. It has the power to create a mirage of well-being for the elite but it also alienates the haves from the have-nots. Maass opens our eyes to the differing fates of the eleven countries that produce the sought-after commodity.
The economic theory of demand and supply states that when there is a scarcity of a sought-after commodity, price goes up. But in Equatorial Guinea, that theory is mockingly defied. There is a huge contrast between the wealth amassed by president Obiang and his family as a result of oil and the poverty of his people.
If the variances in fate and fortune are depressing, then stupidity and the self-indulgence of Obiang is maddening. When interviewed in front of his private jet, a US$55mil Boeing 737 with gold plated bathroom fixtures, Obiang boastfully replied: “This plane elevates the image of our country in the developed world.” Does that mean oil is all that is needed to lift a country from its moribund economy? That it does not matter if its people are hungry, that there is no medicine in the hospitals, no light bulbs in government offices or asphalt roads. Is this not plundering the nation?
Oil, a substance that enriches and brings convenience, also blurs visions, corrupts and endangers. But who owns it? As oilman Paul Getty once conceded: “The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights.” How apt that we can hardly find any country, saved probably Canada and Norway, where oil revenues are not in the hands of greedy elites who grant drilling contracts to foreign oil companies.
Among the eleven countries, Nigeria is by far the most unfortunate. It is essentially a giant stage where warlords, governors and tribal kings fight for the treasure under their feet.
The situation is made worst when oil companies contaminate the place. The flaring of natural gas, a byproduct when oil is brought to the surface, releases contaminants that cause illness such as renal and cardiovascular failures, cancer, leukemia, emphysema, bronchitis, immune-system dysfunctions and reproductive disorders.
These contaminants, when infused with the smell of petroleum, creates a heavy odor, which is made worst in the humidity of the tropics. These are the defining features in some of the villages blessed with oil, yet its people live in some of the bleakest conditions unimaginable.
Villages rot while the foreign workers of oil companies live in gated communities, enjoying not only security but clean water, electricity, green lawn, smooth roads and eating food flown in from abroad, namely the US.
If it is fear of not winning oil contracts that make oil companies circumvent legal and moral strictures with bribes and fraud, then it was Iraq’s oil and America’s insatiable desire for it that drove George W. Bush to invade Iraq. It had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction nor did it have anything to do with the brutality of Saddam Hussein.
Likewise, if oil has alienated Saudi Arabia’s royal family from its people, then the same can be said about corporate Russia, which seems to be secretively alienating itself by forming an oil empire.
A lot of the issues that Peter Maass covers in Crude World have been reported elsewhere. What makes this book different is Maass’ dramatic reportage, and his interviews with political and business players, activists and the ordinary people affected by oil business.
Maass evokes vivid narratives and is never short of metaphors. “We saw pits of burning oil and we saw flames roaring from flares on the ground; the earth was hissing fire,” he writes from the Niger Delta. In Ecuador, he says: “I passed through a fifty-mile stretch of apocalypse – a mutant panorama of oil fields and gas flares in which crude oozed and burned around me.”
It is his first hand account of the enviromnment that made this an enjoyable read.
While the dark truth of the oil industry have starkly confronted me, there is another dangerous spawn – the global spread of fundamentalism. The war for oil may stop when wells run dry, but the vengeance it has spawned will not disappear so easily.
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