Ken Silverstein

The Secret World of Oil by Ken Silverstein is an insider’s look into the oil industry. Silverstein is a fellow of the Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He received the Overseas Press Club Award as a co-writer of “The Politics of Petroleum.” He has also written for the Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Wallpaper, Washington Monthly, The Nation, Slate, and Salon.

Oil is that magical substance that you pump into your car as gasoline. You pay for that gas and the gas station gets its share, the oil company gets their share. The oil company then takes its money and pays for leases on foreign land and the crude oil extracted to the foreign government. That government then invests the money in education, infrastructure, and social programs. Everyone is happy and everyone’s life is improved by the magic of oil.

In the real world things are much different. There are Fixers, Traders, Gatekeepers, Lobbyists, corrupt third world leaders, and former first world politicians. Silverstein picks his people. Ely Cali as the Fixer who is the equivalent of a matchmaker. He knows the right people that the oil companies need to meet. Traders are represented by Glencore, previously run by Marc Rich (wanted by federal authorities until pardoned by Clinton in 1993), who buy and trade oil and other resources. Some conduct is illegal like buying Iranian oil and mixing it and reselling it because of the ban on buying and trading Iranian oil. The Gatekeeper is Bretton Sciaroni who now advises the Cambodian government. He previously served as Reagan's chief consul on Intelligence Oversight Board although he had no legal experience. Sciaroni was dismissed after an embarrassing testimony in front of congress on Iran Contra. Now he controls access to the Cambodian government to companies after raw materials.

Louisiana, as a state, is used for the effectiveness of lobbyists. The rock star lifestyle of an oil “prince” is documented with the antics of Teodorin Obiang, the son of the Equatorial Guinea leader. Equatorial Guinea is the third largest producer of oil in Africa; 15% of the US oil imports are from Africa. Teodorin paying thirty million dollars, in cash, for his Malibu home is only the tip of the iceberg. First world politicians are represented by Tony Blair and Neil Bush. One thing in common in all these examples is corruption. Corruption is simply how business is done, and we buy it by the tankful.

Petroleum is too important to pay too much attention to how it gets to the pump. The Secret World of Oil goes into great depth in the few aspects of the oil industry that are chosen to be covered. To be fair, I believe this is a fairly accurate picture of the industry overall. There is, no doubt, instances of more and less corruption and greed, but this is a believable middle ground. I have never been a fan of big oil, in fact I don’t drive a car. I do know bicycle tires, chain lube, plastics, and a host of daily products are all made from oil, but I do my best to limit my usage. I feel, and this book reinforced, my belief that by using oil products I am supporting the corruption, greed, and suffering that this industry brings to the daily lives of many people.
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This story is about a boy named David with a loving mother Patty and workaholic dad Ken. When David was 12 his parents got divorced and his Dad married Kathy his stepmom who was more cautious about the experiments he was doing. He got banned from doing experiments in the attic and in the basement because there was explosion damage and chemical burns everywhere. When he went to his mom’s house and her new boyfriend took interest with blowing things up like a makeshift bomb or homemade fireworks. Before his parents got divorced his mom gave him a book called the Golden Book about two Polish scientist who die from cancer because of radioactive materials which was basically his lifeline to science and got him to do experiments. He would conduct these experiments in his potting shed at his mom’s house which he cleaned out and used as a lab. When he was in high school his dream was to collect every element on the periodic table. Also, when he was high school his dad made him join the Boy Scouts to distract him from his experiments but he somehow finds a way to involve science. He collects a lot of the radioactive elements on the periodic table especially radioactive ones. He gets Thorium from old light mantles and radium paint chips. He has no safety gear except a torn up chemical suit and an old gas mask. He builds a neutron gun out of lead to make uranium for his miniturae nuclear breeder. He also gets 100 smoke detectors and a couple glow in the dark clocks for radium. He tells his dad that all the things he was buying was for his boy scout project or for a school project. He also writes letters to NRC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission in his dad’s name to acquire information about how to find radioactive substances in items. When he finished his nuclear reactor, it was producing too much radiation and he shuts it down. His car was checked because the police said someone was carrying a bomb and when they looked inside his trunk it was all his radioactive materials and a sealed box which they thought had a bomb in it. He was taken to jail where his dad picks him up. His dad said the police thought that he was building an atomic bomb because of all of the radioactive material. Then the DPH, Department of Public Health, comes and confiscate all the materials with the bomb squad to check if he was really building an atomic bomb. He finished his merit badges and becomes an Eagle Scout with all the time he had because he was not experimenting. He had no injuries except temporary radiation burns but that was mostly the only injurie he had from all the radiation
In my opinion this book was a book about a boy who dreamed about something and made it real. This book inspired me to think you can make things that people think you can’t. He built a nuclear reactor in his backyard no normal person could do that in fact most scientist could not do that. I think I like to be a chemical scientist when I grow up just because of this book. I think that the way he did things was not safe, though but they are probably cooler than what normal people do. I sometimes think to myself who would do that but I also think that was cool and he is really smart but not cautious of his safety.… (meer)

This cautionary tale of a teenaged Michigan chemistry enthusiast who managed to construct a rudimentary nuclear reactor in his shed incorporates digressions about tangents such as the quest for the breeder reactor, America's enthusiasm for radioactive consumer products a century ago, and a history of the atomic bomb. These are necessary to bring the book up to a scant 200 pages; the teen's story is interesting enough, but really only worthy of a long magazine article in and of itself. The author clearly finds the episode troubling, and quite rightly so; our mad scientist was thwarted quite by accident during a routine traffic stop when the police found an aggregation of junk he had in his trunk and thought it might be a bomb, and, even then, it took authorities months to discover the reactor, and the secrecy-obsessed EPA cleanup crew came within a couple of hours of destroying the radioactive shed without media showing up. Both the main story and the digressions are interestingly related, and the author explains the chemistry involved in the story very clearly, directly, and briefly.… (meer)