The Squeeze: Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century

‘The Squeeze’ is an invaluable account of the modern oil industry and vital to understanding the awful truth about the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. With unprecedented access to their engineers and executives in London and Houston, Tom Bower tells the inside story of BP's history of alleged negligence. Over the last 20 years, oil prices have soared from $7 a barrel to $147 and down to $37. Amid economic boom and bust, speculators, traders, politicians and monarchs have plotted to earn fortunes from oil, and prayed for salvation from unpredictable natural and man-made disasters. Behind the headlines are the crushing rivalries between men and women exploring for oil five miles beneath the sea, battling for control of the world’s biggest corporations and gambling billions of dollars twenty-four hours every day on oil prices. Success or failure for all those extraordinary personalities depends on squeezing their rivals and squeezing the crude out of the rocks. Overweening vanity and greed absorb those titans whose ambitions are forging the world’s quest for oil. Exploiting unprecedented close access to the lives of irrepressible traders in New York, oil-oligarchs in Moscow, corporate chieftains in Dallas and London and wily politicians floating in jets across the globe, Tom Bower presents the untold story of the most important quandary of our times: why, if there is plentiful oil in the earth, does mankind face a dire shortage threatening our lives? Self-interest is propelling the squeeze and there seems to be no salvation.

About the Author :
Tom Bower is the author of twenty-three best-selling books. In the late 1950s he travelled to communist Czechoslovakia, and while a student at the LSE he was known as 'Tommy the Red'. As a journalist, between 1969 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 he travelled across communist East Germany and spent much of his time during the 1970s reporting for BBC TV with British strikers, especially the miners led by Arthur Scargill. In 1989 he worked for three years in Russia, interviewing high-ranking Soviet intelligence officers who played the spy game against the West. He reported wars from Vietnam, the Middle East and South America, where he encountered hard-left idealists and latterday commissars. Bower's experience of myriad wars, elections, corrupt politicians and shady businessmen cured him of his Marxism, but not of his curiosity and innate scepticism. Dangerous Hero is the latest of his many bestselling and critically acclaimed books.  

Review :
A gripping and convincing account of the turbulent story of the global oil industry over the past decade…scorchingly topical…’The Squeeze’ provides the fascinating story behind the headlines…a first-rate account of where the oil industry is now and some useful pointers as to where it is going' Financial Times