Purchase
Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline
Nan A. Talese
February 2007
On Sale: January 31, 2007
336 pages
ISBN: 0385511450
EAN: 9780385511452
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Political
Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industryβthe 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 this gas come from? Lisa Margonelliβs desire to learn took her on a one-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 Exchangeβs 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 economy of oil, Margonelli finds a series of stark warning signs for American drivers.
 Media BuzzOn Point - May 17, 2011
On Point - July 23, 2010
On Point - May 3, 2010
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - April 10, 2008
Weekend Edition Saturday - February 24, 2007
Today - February 11, 2007
| 
© 2003-2026