Just Add Oil.

• Position: Petroleum industry, accidents and energy policy - Brief Article

Whether you noticed or not, thick, black, crude oil has been all over the newspapers, television, and even the Internet since the beginning of the year. Perhaps the biggest news about oil was the elevation of George W. Bush to the U.S. presidency. Bush, having made millions from Texas Oil, has surrounded himself with oil industry executives and lobbyists, including his vice president (former Halliburton oil and energy company CEO Dick Cheney) and his chief of staff (Andrew Card, Jr., former chief of one the world's largest oil lobbies, the American Automobile Manufacturers Association). Faced with news that California was facing an energy crunch, these officials ignored dire new estimates from the U.N.'s expert panel on climate change (see page 9) and instead called for oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In Africa, Chadian President Idriss Deby crushed the hopes of the World Bank that the new Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline project could circumvent the corruption and abuse...