Oil: Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Book review

Oil: Money, Politics and Power in the 21st Century. By Tom Bower. Grand Central Publishing, 508 pages. $26.99.

Tom Bower's timely book was published this past summer when the world's attention was focused on the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and on the alleged safety problems at BP, one of the chief actors in this sprawling story. While the Gulf disaster has thankfully receded from the headlines, 'Big Oil' and its impact on economies and the environment remains one of the most compelling subjects in business.

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These days, as Bower notes, oil exploration and delivery have become intensively bound into key discussions about climate change and the future of the earth's energy supplies. The major oil companies themselves have staked out varying positions on their approach to carbon emissions and alternative fuels, in the process becoming grist for intense public policy debates. Meanwhile, the strength of the major oil cartel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has waned in recent decades, but it still exerts a price-setting power virtually unique in global markets.

If OPEC is essentially united in its goals, Bower makes the astute observation that the oil industry itself is intrinsically fragmented. "There is no natural bond," he writes, between people as disparate as geologists, gas station attendants, refinery workers and corporate chieftains negotiating for drilling rights.

This wide-ranging book displays a good journalist's sense of even-handedness.

Bower writes that "many of those employed in the oil industry are remarkably intelligent individuals pursuing their ambitions with expertise and inspiration, rather than being inextricably entangled, as the alarmists suggest, in corruption, conspiracies and cover-ups."

Just as the stakes keep rising, "oil...