out that corporate oil has multiple risks to cover, employs millions of people in the developing world and has a cost/benefit impact typically well in excess of the in-country portfolio (often itself substantial). Such technicalities fall on deaf ears. The debate is ideological and intended to be so.”

Resource nationalism The next part of the book examines the West’s contemporary oil game. “There are new empires of oil emerging that challenge the old order, with a paradigm shift already in process,” Clarke says, presenting evidence that suggests that what we are currently witnessing is the end of an era during which corporate control of the oil industry has gradually eroded and been replaced by nation states assuming greater power. This phenomenon is usually described as resource nationalism. In short, state players and their national oil companies have radically transformed the oil game with what Clarke describes as the “fractious energy developments” involving Russia, China, Iran, the Middle East and many new oil-rich pretenders across the world – Venezuela being a prime example. Clarke also draws attention to a growing divergence between the interests of the US and Europe. For many years the oil industry was controlled and dominated by the West’s infamous ‘seven sisters’ (Esso, Shell, BP, Gulf, Texaco, Mobil and Socal – later Chevron), their birth being inextricably linked with the latter days of the British Empire before being overtaken by a US corporate ascendance. Control of the global oil industry is now being challenged not only by non-Western players but by the post-Cold War fracturing of the transatlantic accord between US and European oil companies. This dynamic, Clarke suggests, has similarities with what occurred when the interests of Rome and Constantinople began to diverge. The author also draws on the lesson to be drawn from ancient history of the perils of losing resource

of engagement with human rights,” he opines. But Clarke seems sanguine with regard to the challenges faced by multinational oil corporations and the emergence of resource nationalism, the barbarians at the gate so to speak, compared to the struggle that corporate oil needs to wage with the ‘barbarians within’ – the West’s anti-globalisation activists (that he calls the ‘fifth estate’) who generally share a distinct enmity towards the hydrocarbon industry.

Duncan Clarke describes the current global scramble for Africa as being focused on the continent’s hydrocarbon resources.

control – the way that the Roman Empire was fatally weakened when it was no longer able to rely on the granaries of North Africa. That was an early example of how the continent’s resources have, through the centuries, played a key role in the fortunes of global empires.

Africa’s emergence Clarke says that the global scramble for Africa has “returned with a vengeance – this time focused on hydrocarbons”. He further notes that national oil companies from around the world such as those from China, India, Southeast Asia and Africa, like Sonatrach (Algeria) and PetroSA (South Africa), have all expanded their asset base and can now be found in situ across Africa. Yet, even if the continent’s oil and gas production and exports are

set to increase for the foreseeable future, he gives Africa little chance of creating an oil empire. Rather, he notes (does this sound familiar?) Africa will be relegated to a role of providing the theatre where the foreign oil empires compete with each other. While the West’s oil industry players, from the super-majors to the minnows, are all involved in Africa – in part as an alternative to supplies to the Gulf, in part because in represents new frontiers – he sees the challenge posed by Chinese interests as being particularly potent. “Corporate oil cannot compete directly with China’s ancillary infrastructure deals, soft financing, diplomatic muscle, state-to-state transactions, arms provision, sanctioned state entries and lack

Big oil’s critics Clarke asks the big questions: who are the critics of corporate oil, what is their agenda, and how should corporate oil respond to ensure its survival? He despairs of the way that the industry, in general, deals with the tens of thousands of NGOs that are opposed to the oil corporations (a Google search for NGOs & oil, he tells us, produces over 1.3m hits!), describing it as curious that they seem so reluctant to engage with and debate many of the core issues. “Most importantly,” Clarke writes, “[corporate oil] shies away from playing its trump card. That is, it refrains from arguing that, on portfolio cost/benefit terms, the oil industry and oil companies can usually be shown as huge net contributors to global living standards and world development.” He seems only marginally more enamoured with the fourth estate – describing the way that corporate oil now faces opposition from journalists “both inadvertently, sometimes through a lack of understanding of the scientific, technical and industrial issues involved, and sometimes consciously”. Our author might consider taking out a subscription to African Business to obtain a more rounded and balanced view of the media coverage afforded to corporate oil’s activities, at least in Africa. But besides this very obvious oversight, this book’s strength is the author’s willingness to fearlessly present views that run counter to what is currently deemed politically correct.

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