Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank

Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank

Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industryâ€”the 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 Margonelliâ€™s 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 Exchangeâ€™s 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.
Country USA
Brand Broadway Books
Manufacturer Crown
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780767916974
Color White
ReleaseDate 2008-02-12
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780767916974

Country	USA
Brand	Broadway Books
Manufacturer	Crown
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780767916974
Color	White
ReleaseDate	2008-02-12
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780767916974

Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank

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