Crude World (37 page)

Rockefeller then returned:
See Yergin,
The Prize
, p. 109.

Its appeals delayed payment:
The
New York Times
reported on the ruling in a June 26, 2008, story, “Damages Cut Against Exxon in Valdez Case.” For the number of plaintiffs who have died since the spills, see “Exxon Valdez Decision Expected in the Next Four Weeks,”
Alaska Daily News
, June 1, 2008.

In 2008, two Chevron lawyers:
See “Chevron Lawyers Indicted in Connection with Ecuador Case,” by Dan Slater,
Wall Street Journal
online, September 15, 2008. Posted at
www.blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/09/15/
chevron-lawyers-indicted-in-connection-with-ecuador-case/
.

The accusation made national headlines:
See “Woes Mount for Oil Firms in Ecuador,” by Kelly Hearn,
Christian Science Monitor
, February 9, 2006.

And the people of Sarayaku were ready:
For a useful overview of the Sarayaku standoff, see “The New Amazon,” by Marisa Handler,
Orion
, January 2005.

5 Fear

“Ordinary people”:
Stanley Milgram,
Obedience to Authority
, p. 6.

“He steals money from California”:
See “Word for Word/Energy Hogs,”
New York Times, June
13, 2004.

James Giffen was the son:
An in-depth description of Giffen’s career and
deal making is contained in Steve LeVine’s excellent book
The Oil and the Glory
. Portions of my account are drawn from LeVine’s work.

According to the Justice Department’s indictment:
The U.S. Southern District Prosecutor posted an announcement of the indictment of Giffen and J. Bryan Williams at
www.usdoj.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/
April03/giffenwilliams.pdf
.

As a convicted felon:
Seymour Hersh wrote a lengthy story, “The Price of Oil”
(New Yorker
, July 9, 2001), that delved into the activities of Williams and Giffen, who each told me they disagreed with the article’s portrayal.

“some of the payments”:
See “Manhattan Judge Rules on Pre-trial Motions in ‘Kazakhgate’ Case,” by Marlena Telvick, July
9
, 2004, published by International Freedom Network. Copy posted at
www.ifn.org.uk/article.php?sid=6
.

“Bullshit”:
See Anne Applebaum, “Fond Memories of Stalin,”
Slate
, June
5
, 2000.

Tantalizingly, hotel residents could see:
My description of the Intourist draws on interviews with oil executives who were there in the 1990s. I have also drawn from the work of journalists Thomas Goltz and Steve LeVine, who reported from Baku in the 1990s, as well as “Azerbaijan’s Riches Alter the Chessboard,” by Dan Morgan and David B. Ottoway,
Washington Post
, October
4,1998
.

This was the gala evening:
The conference was organized by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm headed by Daniel Yergin.

He was rewarded:
See “For Leading Exxon to Its Riches, $144,573 a Day,”
New York Times
, April 15, 2006.

6 Greed

American oil firms and executives:
After the start of World War II, Texaco secretly shipped oil to Germany via Colombia. The firm’s president, Torkild Rieber, even traveled to Berlin to meet Hermann Goering and agreed to convey a proposal for the surrender of Britain. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Rieber to cease all contact with the Germans, Texaco secretly paid the salary and expenses of a German agent
who came to New York to persuade American businessmen not to supply Britain with weapons and other materiel. The German was even given an office in Texaco’s headquarters in the Chrysler building. Once Texaco’s ties to Hitler’s regime were disclosed, the firm’s share price tumbled and Rieber was forced to resign. See Anthony Sampson’s
The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped
, pp. 78–83. As Sampson wrote of the oil scandals in the wartime era, “It is not necessary to see these three scandals as evidence of any special moral turpitude on the part of the oil leaders: they were brigands of their time, trying to extend a greedy international industry across the barriers of war. They were men who did not know when to stop, and there was very little to stop them. But their ruthlessness and autocracy did reveal very sharply the basic uncontrollability of oil, and the ability of the industry to defy national governments.”

As Interior Secretary Harold Ickes:
He wrote the remark in one of his diaries. See Sampson,
The Seven Sisters
, pp. 94–95.

Cheating continues in America:
For example, in 2008 the Interior Department’s inspector general issued reports that accused more than a dozen current and former officials in the department’s royalty-collecting service of engaging in drug use and illicit sex with employees of energy firms, as well as accepting meals, ski trips, sports tickets and golf outings from them. The report said the acceptance of banned gratuities occurred “with prodigious frequency.” See
New York Times
, “Sex, Drug Use and Graft Cited in Interior Department,” by Charlie Savage, September 10, 2008, and
Washington Post
, “Report Says Oil Agency Ran Amok,” by Derek Kravitz and Mary Pat Flaherty, September 11, 2008.

On occasion these missing links:
Details of the scheme are drawn from a number of published sources, including “U.S. Targets Overseas Bribery,” by ProPublica and PBS’s Frontline, September
9
, 2008, and “Out of Africa: In Halliburton Nigeria Probe, a Search for Bribes to a Dictator,” by Russell Gold and Charles Fleming,
Wall Street Journal
, September 29, 2004.

In 2009, Halliburton admitted:
See “Halliburton, KBR Settle Bribery Allegations,” by Zachary A. Goldfarb,
Washington Post
, February 12, 2009.

Tesler has been indicted:
For Tesler’s indictment, see the Department of Justice
announcement posted at
www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/March/09-crm-192.html
.

But Norway and Canada:
The legislators were Pete Kott, a former Alaska House speaker, and Vic Kohring, a former state representative. The Anchorage Daily News has posted stories about their convictions at
www.community.adn.com/adn/node/112569
.

The Dodges filed a lawsuit:
Michael Skapinker wrote about
Dodge v. Ford Motor Co
. in “Fair Shares?,”
Financial Times
, June 11, 2005. In an informative exchange, several distinguished law professors had an online debate about the meaning of
Dodge v. Ford;
see
www.businessassociationsblog
.com/lawandbusiness/comments/does_
dodge_v_ford_motor_co_remain_canon/
.

Milton Friedman championed:
The article was published in the
New York Times Magazine
on September 13, 1970.

In 1991 Condoleezza Rice joined the Chevron board:
See
Condoleezza Rice: An American Life
, by Elisabeth Bumiller, pp. 109–10.

“Today’s energy industry earnings”: New York Times
, January 19, 2006.

The same year, without any mention:
See Justin Fox, “No More Gushers for ExxonMobil,”
Time
, May 31, 2007.

“Would ExxonMobil be willing”: Today
, May 3, 2006.

“left the church”:
Darcy Frey, “How Green Is BP?,”
New York Times Magazine
, December 8, 2002.

In 2005, a BP refinery in Texas:
See “Faults at BP Led to One of Worst US Industrial Disasters,”
Financial Times
, December 18, 2006, and “BP Paints Grim Picture of Texas Refinery Before Blast,”
Financial Times
, March 19, 2007.

“For a company that claims”:
See “Behind the Spin, the Oil Giants Are More Dangerous Than Ever,”
Guardian, June
13, 2006.

“What we stand to gain”:
See “U.S. Accuses BP of Manipulating Price of Propane,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 29, 2006.

As the presses rolled:
See “The Tragic Departure of a Gay CEO,”
Newsweek
, May 3, 2007.

“Corporations have to be responsive”:
See “Five Who Laid the Groundwork for Historic Spike in Oil Market,”
Wall Street Journal
, December 20, 2005.

Until the 1970s:
See “As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops,” by Jad Mouawad,
New York Times
, August
19
, 2008.

7 Desire

In a famous meeting:
The deadly purge has been widely reported. See Neil MacFarquhar, “Saddam Hussein Had Oppressed Iraq for More Than 30 Years,”
New York Times
, December 29, 2006, and Bay Fang, “When Saddam Ruled the Day,”
U.S. News & World Report
, July 11, 2004.

The United States even supplied Iraq:
Reported by Michael Dobbs, “U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup,”
Washington Post
, December 30, 2002.

Donald Rumsfeld, a pharmaceutical:
See Christopher Marquis, “Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in ’84 Despite Chemical Raids,”
New York Times
, December 23, 2003.

“There were indications”:
See Joost R. Hiltermann,
A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq and the Gassing of Halabja
, p. 7.

“our vulnerable friend Saudi Arabia”:
George H. W. Bush and Brent Scow-croft,
A World Transformed
, p
. 303
.

“They won’t stop here”:
Ibid., p. 319.

“[Saddam] has clearly done”:
Ibid., p. 323.

As the writer:
Stephen Kinzer,
All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror
, p. 2. Much of my description of Mossadegh and the coup comes from Kinzer’s invaluable book.

Even British foreign secretary:
Kinzer,
All the Shah’s Men
, p. 68

“Ever since Churchill”:
Anthony Sampson,
The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped
, p. 137.

As Roosevelt later wrote:
Kinzer,
All the Shah’s Men
, p. 173.

Roosevelt had shown: Ibid.
, pp. 179–80.

The shah, returning home:
Ibid., p. 191.

A month after Iraq’s invasion:
The speech was made on September 11, 1990.

Americans sensed this:
See Christopher Layne and Ted Galen Carpenter, “Time for Congress to Vote on the Issue of War in the Gulf,” Cato Institute Foreign Policy Briefing No. 5, December 14, 1990. Layne and Carpenter cite several opinion polls, including one published by the
Los Angeles Times
, in which 53 percent of the respondents opposed going to war against Iraq. Posted at
www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-005.html
.

Nayirah, a teenage Kuwaiti girl:
The hearing, held on October 10, 1990, was organized by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, chaired by Democrat Tom Lantos and Republican John Porter.

She tearfully recounted:
My account of the Nayirah saga is taken from a number of sources, including Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Wald-man,
The Press Effect
, pp. 16–20; John R. MacArthur, “Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?,”
New York Times
, January 6, 1992; Arthur E. Rowse, “How to Build Support for War,”
Columbia Journalism Review
, September/October 1992; and “When Contemplating War, Beware of Babies in Incubators,”
Christian Science Monitor
, September 6, 2002.

Bush reinforced the theme:
The speech, on October
28
, 1990, was made at Hickam Air Force Base, adjacent to Pearl Harbor.

In the debate:
Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, eds.,
The Iraq War Reader
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 135.

Chevron was one of the buyers:
“Chevron to Pay $30 Million to Settle Kickback Charges,”
New York Times
, November 15, 2007.

“It is tempting”:
“The War in Iraq Is Distracting the West from the Looming Crisis in Saudi Arabia,” Anthony Sampson,
Independent
, May 22, 2004.

“This is the guy that tried to kill my dad”:
Bush made the remark at a fundraiser in Texas on September 26, 2002.

As Saddam’s regime fell apart:
There are a number of accounts of the killing that day; the details remain murky. I have drawn on many articles, including several stories written by reporters for Knight-Ridder who were in Najaf at the time, as well as an account from
Newsweek
(“Murder at the Mosque,” by Joshua Hammer, May 19, 2003) and
The New Yorker
(“The Uprising,” by Jon Lee Anderson, May 3, 2004).