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

"Sweeping in scope and densely detailed...a rare and highly illuminating global perspective on the industry over the last two decades."―The New York Times

"In this penetrating study of the modern petroleum industry, journalist and historian Bower) portrays the last 30 years as a time of both obscene profits and white-knuckle perils for the major oil companies.....his analysis of the industry and its shocking price swings is a persuasive one that eschews conspiracy theories and peak oil alarmism to focus on rising demand for reserves that are plentiful but hard to get at. The result is an illuminating look at a business whose real workings are more interesting than the mythology surrounding them."―Publishers Weekly

"Oil couldn't be a hotter or messier topic, making Bower's sprawling exploration of its modern history - told through the perspectives of engineers, traders, an oligarch and industry players such as BP's John Browne and Exxon's Lee Raymond- all the more timely."―USA Today

"[Bower's book is] ominous, even prescient, in what it says about BP's past practices."―LA Times

"With one of the worst environmental disasters in American history now troubling the waters and coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, this monumental history of the oil industry during the past two decades has much more relevance...This exhaustively researched and well-written volume covers the whole waterfront of major oil companies, the people who run them, the roles of politicians and governments in chasing oil, the traders who have yo-yoed its price, the wars that have been fueled by competition for it and the role it continues to play in regional and global instability."―Fort Worth Star Telegram

"Investigative journalist Tom Bower has used the same narrative approach as Sampson [The Seven Sisters] and Yergin [The Prize] to bring the industry's story forward from the 1980s to the present day, and his book bears comparison with theirs . . . the reader is ushered into a front-row seat, and what follows is often gripping. However fast-paced, Bower cleverly keeps the action in focus . . . [he] builds up a brilliant picture . . . [and] achieves impressively seamless continuity."―The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"A roller-coaster account . . . [Bower] has a real sense of the drama of deal-making and deal-breaking, of keeping vast corporations afloat in conditions that are rarely stable."―Telegraph (UK)

"Bower gets the big strategic judgments right."―The Sunday Times (London)

"A gripping and convincing account of the turbulent story of the global oil industry . . . the events he covers are scarcely less dramatic than those described in The Prize, including the ascent of the oil price to record highs. Bower's book has the advantage of being scorchingly topical . . . 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 (UK)

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.