Get Ebooks 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 industry—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 Margonelli’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 Exchange’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.
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books; Reprint edition (February 12, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0767916972
ISBN-13: 978-0767916974
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #243,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #51 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Energy Production & Extraction > Fossil Fuels > Petroleum #100 in Books > Business & Money > Industries > Energy & Mining > Oil & Energy #744 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Economic Conditions
For all its constant appearance in news of the business and political worlds, oil as an economic and chemically transformable commodity is remarkably little understood by the average person. Most of us have never seen a barrel of oil or an oil pipeline. Most of us have never watched oil being cracked in a petrochemical plant to produce gasoline or any of the dozens of other byproducts that permeate modern life. Most of us don't even know how much oil is contained in a barrel, or how much gasoline can be derived from a barrel of black gold. At most, we pull up at the pump and open our gas caps and our wallets. With OIL ON THE BRAIN, author Lisa Margonelli opens the doors into perhaps the most geopolitically and environmentally important world of the 21st Century, the mostly invisible world of oil.Structurally, Ms. Margonelli starts at the familiar gas station pump and moves successively backwards through the distribution, production, and exploration chains. At the earliest stages of her exposition, most of which take place in the continental United States, she captures her subject matter through a personal prism - individuals who represents that particular stage in the process of bringing gasoline and heating oil to the end consumer. Thus, we learn about gas station profitability from Michael Gharib, owner of the Twin Peaks gas station in San Franciso, gasoline distributorship from the friendly folks at Coast Oil (owner David Mitchell, dispatcher Chris, and driver/hauler Roger), and refining from optimization manager Ken Cole at BP's plant in Carson, CA. Finally leaving California, we move on to lessons in drilling from fourth generation oilman C.D.
Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank Oil Painting: Learn Oil Painting FAST! Learn the Basics of Oil Painting In No Time (Oil Painting Tutorial, Oil Painting Books, Oil Painting For Beginners, Oil Painting Course, Oil Painting) A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead Grateful Dead: What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been (Rebels of Rock) (Rebels of Rock (Paperback)) Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead: The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long, Strange Trip Essential Oils for a Clean and Healthy Home: 200+ Amazing Household Uses for Tea Tree Oil, Peppermint Oil, Lavender Oil, and More Oil Man: The Story of Frank Phillips and the Birth of Phillips Petroleum The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations Berlitz Language: German For Your Trip (Berlitz For Your Trip) Berlitz Japanese For Your Trip (Berlitz For Your Trip) Deep Sleep: Brain Wave Subliminal (Brain Sync Series) (Brain Sync Audios) Oil Painter's Solution Book - Landscapes: Over 100 Answers to Your Oil Painting Questions Oil Painting Techniques: Learn How to Master Oil Painting Working Techniques to Create your Own Successful Paintings (Artist's Painting Library) You Wouldn't Want to Sail on the Mayflower!: A Trip That Took Entirely Too Long You Wouldn't Want to Explore with Marco Polo!: A Really Long Trip You'd Rather Not Take Manga Bible, Vol. 1: Names, Games, and the Long Road Trip (Genesis, Exodus) Navigating Through a Strange Land:: A Book for Brain Tumor Patients and Their Families, Oil Pastel Step by Step: Discover the secrets to creating masterpieces in oil pastel (Artist's Library) Coconut Oil and Apple Cider Vinegar Handbook: Use Coconut Oil and Apple Cider Vinegar for Healing, Curing, Beauty, and Glowing Radiant Skin Understanding Oil Prices: A Guide to What Drives the Price of Oil in Today's Markets (The Wiley Finance Series)
