The Oil Card

Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century

James R. Norman

• Publisher: Trine Day
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9780984185863
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Business

Challenging the conventional wisdom surrounding high oil prices, this compelling argument sheds an entirely new light on free-market industry fundamentals. By deciphering past, present, and future geopolitical events, it makes the case that oil pricing and availability have a long history of being employed as economic weapons by the United States. Despite ample world supplies and reserves, high prices are now being used to try to rein in China—a reverse of the low-price strategy used in the 1980s to deprive the Soviets of hard currency. Far from conspiracy theory, the debate notes how the U.S. has previously used the oil majors, the Saudis, and market intervention to move markets—and shows how this is happening again. This compact and unorthodox analysis will appeal to a broad audience—from energy consumers puzzled by intractably high oil prices to producers wondering how long windfall prices can defy gravity.

Table of contents

• Publisher’s Foreword
• Preface to the Second Printing
• Impossible!
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Breaking the Soviet Union with Oil Prices
• Next Target: China?
• That was Then. This is Now.
• From Allyto Adversary
• China’s Oil Response: The Home Front
• “Going Out,” and Trouble Follows
• Saddam Crosses the Line
• The Role of the Oil Majors
• Russia, and “Comrade Wolf”
• The Saudi Role
• The SPR and Other Oil Price Levers
• The Role of the Futures Market
• Conclusion
• Unocal: A Deal Too Far
• Other Economic War Fronts?
• INDEX
• Back Cover Material