Antonia Juhasz has more than earned our attention over the last few years as an oil industry watchdog… including being on point to raise the alarm about the Iraqi “hydrocarbon law.” This reply (written by her) to a Washington Post hit-piece against her book is as good a recommendation as I can give for (1) getting her book and (2) giving serious thought to the relative power of the oil industry and the government… ie, Obama’s incoming administration.

Upon the 1904 publication of Ida Tarbell’s The History of Standard
Oil, a reviewer wrote,

“…This book seems to have been written for the purpose of
intensifying the popular hatred. The writer had either a vague
conception of the nature of proof, or she is willing to black the
character of Mr. John D. Rockefeller by insinuation and detraction…
We need reforms badly enough, but we shall not get them until we have
an electorate able to control its passions, to reserve its
condemnation, to deliberate before it acts. When that time comes, a
railing accusation will not be accepted as history.”

It is as if journalist Steve LeVine channeled this century-old
review in his November 11 Washington Post review

of my book, The Tyranny of Oil.

Below, I correct only the many factual errors in his review. The
Washington Post book editor is currently considering a shorter
version of this letter for publication in the November 30 issue the
Washington Post Book World.

“Unfair” to the Oil Industry.

LeVine’s first lament is that I am “unfair” for quoting “no one from
the industry in its defense.”

Although rebuffed in my efforts to interview oil company executives
directly, I did interview and then quote at length John Felmy, senior
economist for the American Petroleum Institute—the oil industry’s
leading lobbying organization, with a board composed of the CEOs of
every major oil company. I also quote at length from oil executives’
and representatives’ written speeches, congressional testimony, and
statements to the press; corporate shareholder reports, tax filings
with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other
financial reporting; company press releases and press conferences,
advertisements, and websites; and similar reports and reporting by
the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

I conducted a series of extremely unique interviews of four recent
chairmen of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), who served under
Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush, three of whom
oversaw and ultimately approved the largest mergers in U.S. oil
industry history, and one of whom, Timothy Muris, is now co-chair of
the antitrust practice division at O’Melveny & Myers, where his
clients have included ExxonMobil (which the law firm represented in,
among numerous other cases, its U.S. Supreme Court Exxon Valdez
victory).

My primary industry data sources come from the companies themselves
or from research arms of the U.S. government under the Bush
administration—arguably, the most pro-oil-industry administration in
U.S. history—including the Department of Energy’s Energy Information
Administration and the FTC.

“Unworthy” Sources?

Then there are the interviews I conducted that LeVine dismisses
because the subjects are “harboring grievances” and whom, he
protests, are “provided a hearing throughout the book.” I can not
know for sure, but I suppose that he was referring to the following
original interview subjects: the assistant attorney general of
California, the former California secretary for the environment (now
under consideration by President-elect Obama for the office of
“Climate Czar”); the mayor of Richmond, California; current and
former senior staff of key congressional committees and members of
congress, the president of the League of Conservation Voters, a lead
oil industry researcher for the U.S. General Accounting Office,
executive director of West County Toxics Coalition, energy director
of Public Citizen, research director of Consumer Watchdog, a former
director of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and
the Vice President of the American Antitrust Institute among numerous
other lawyers, legal scholars, policy experts, advocates for
consumer, human rights, public health, environmental, labor rights,
and anti-war concerns, community activists, and concerned citizens.

LeVine argues that, “by contrast” to me, Tarbell was “a
“superlatively meticulous researcher who quoted Standard insiders at
length.” Tarbell did conduct a series of interviews with Standard
Oil’s Henry Rogers. However, Tarbell treats Rogers’ insights with a
high and appropriate level of skepticism. For, as she writes in her
autobiography, she quickly realized that Rogers had ulterior
motives—hoping to sway her coverage of what ultimately became a
charge of conspiracy against him involving Standard’s takeover of the
Vacuum Oil Works. As I do in The Tyranny of Oil, Tarbell’s sources
were primarily congressional hearings, government investigations,
legal proceedings, investigative journalism performed by herself and
her colleagues, the minutia of oil company financial reports, and
one-on-one interviews with those negatively impacted by the industry.

“Lifted” Material.

LeVine contends, “ Juhasz bases almost the entirety of this 400-page
text on the work of others. For example, she lifts colorful
descriptions . . . from newspaper articles, a method that appears
lazy in a book on contemporary events.”

This not-so-subtle charge of plagiarism is not only unfounded, it is
silly. LeVine knows every instance in which I quote a newspaper or
other article because I reference every one, either in the text or
among the book’s more than 750 footnotes. Moreover, while this book
is based on massive amounts of original research, I was also careful
not to reinvent the wheel. Like The Bush Agenda, The Tyranny of Oil
is as much a resource and reference guide as a source of new and
original information and analysis. One of my goals is to make readers
aware of all of the excellent work, both by individuals and
organizations, available to them beyond my own writing.

“Blocking” Clean Energy Technology.

LeVine’s factual errors begin with the third sentence of his review.
Never do I write, as he claims, that the oil companies are working to
block clean energy technology. I do find, through an original
detailed investigation of their tax filings, that—contrary to their
expensive PR campaigns seeking to recast themselves as “energy” (vs.
merely oil) companies—ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell
and Marathon spend, on average, only about 2 percent of their annual
expenditures on clean energy, while simultaneously pursuing
increasingly environmentally destructive methods to produce oil, such
as from the tar sands of Canada, the shale regions of the Midwest, and
off the nation’s and the world’s coasts.

Wars for Oil.

LeVine mischaracterizes several points in my book as inaccuracies,
implying, for example, that I have argued that World War I, World War
II, and Vietnam were “wars for oil.” While many fine scholars do make
these points in numerous other works, they are not found in The
Tyranny of Oil. LeVine writes: “World War I was not an ‘oil war’ any
more than was World War II or the Vietnam War, except in the obvious
sense that you need oil to win a war…” While I write, “World War I
was the first large-scale oil war: oil was the source of victory and
its reward.” That is all I wrote about World War I, and never do I
describe World War II or Vietnam as wars for oil. Rather, I devote
virtually an entire chapter to laying out the case that the war in
Iraq is about oil, as is oil at the root of the threat of war against
Iran, and that the Bush administration has put in place the largest
realignment of the U.S. military since the end of the cold
war–expanding the presence of the U.S. military around the world to
those places where oil is found and transported—and that the threat
of more wars, be they in the Middle East or Africa, has grown
accordingly.

LeVine then contends, “The Nobel brothers and Shell did not increase
Soviet oil production in the 1920s, since the oil properties of both
companies had been appropriated by then.” Here is what I write: “At
the end of the war… The Russians increased production, led by the
Nobel Brothers and Shell.” While nationalization (the correct term is
“expropriation,” not “appropriation”) of Russia’s oil holdings did
take place following the Russian revolution, this did not stop the
oil companies from doing business with the Russians. Among the oil
companies that sold the Russians the technology used to vastly expand
production following the war, bought Russia’s oil exports, and
marketed them on a global stage were Shell and Standard Oil (which
had bought controlling rights to half the Nobel interests in Russia
in July 1920).

Standard’s Spawn.

Levine writes, “Juhasz describes the 1991 film Terminator 2 . . . .
to illustrate her overall contention that Big Oil is a restoration of
Standard Oil, and so like its predecessor must be broken up. This is a
mighty stretch. ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are children of
Standard. But Shell merely bought the motor oil department of Pennzoil
after Pennzoil spun off its production and exploration divisions to
Devon Energy. And refiner Valero simply bought an Exxon refinery and
retail distribution chain. This is not Rockefeller’s Standard Oil,
nor have the “spawn” of Standard, as Juhasz irritatingly and
repeatedly refers to the companies, reconstituted anything resembling
the monopoly power enjoyed by him or by Big Oil as it was until two
decades ago.”

Here is what I write in the book, “It took a hundred years, but
today the several pieces of Standard Oil are nearing full
reunification. The political power and control exercised by today’s
oil giants over our government have just one historical precedent:
the heyday of Standard Oil. In 1999, government regulators allowed
the two largest post breakup pieces of Standard Oil to merge and form
the largest most profitable company in history: ExxonMobil. In fact,
all three of the top US oil companies today are direct descendants of
Standard Oil. They are, in order, ExxonMobil, Chevron and
ConocoPhillips. The fifth largest U.S. oil company, Marathon, is also
a direct descendant. Moreover; all five of the largest private oil
companies in the world, ExxonMobil the Shell Oil Group, BP, Chevron
and ConocoPhillips, are made up of former parts of Standard Oil.”

Pennzoil was the product of four baby-Standard company mergers:
Eureka Pipe Line Company, South Penn Oil Company, National Transit
Company, and South West Pennsylvania Pipe lines.

BP’s purchase of Amoco and Arco gave it Standard Oil of Indiana and
Atlantic Refining Company (brought into the Rockefeller fold in
1874), respectively.

Monopoly power.

Finally, nowhere in The Tyranny of Oil do I argue that the US is a
facing an oil monopoly. However, I do trace the depths of collusion
and over-concentration within the oil industry. Since 1991 there have
been more than 2600 mergers in the industry. ExxonMobil, Chevron,
ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell and Valero now control almost 60 percent of
the U.S. refining market—roughly twice as much as the largest
companies controlled just 12 years ago. Excluding Valero, these same
companies control more than 60 percent of U.S. gas stations.
Thousands of independent oil refineries and gas stations have been
bought up or pushed out, leaving a market dominated by a few oil
giants.

It was in response to the political power of Standard Oil, nearly a
century ago, that people across the United States organized against
the company in a mass people’s movement, ultimately leading to the
breakup of the company into 34 separate corporate parts.

I offer this description of a newspaper cartoon from the era
depicting the U.S. Senate. “Towering above the seated senators, three
times their individual size, stand grossly obese men representing the
trusts. Each man is dressed in top hat and tails. Standard Oil, the
most dominant, is the only company depicted by name among the
“copper,” “iron,” “sugar,” “tin,” “coal,” and “paper bag” trusts.
Above them a sign is posted: “This is a Senate of the monopolists, by
the monopolists, for the monopolists!” Off in the far left corner is a
small sign that reads “People’s Entrance,” below which is a bolted and
barred door marked “closed.”

Today, I argue, the largest oil companies operating in the United
States have employed a strategy of consolidation, concentration, and
political manipulation to acquire vast and utterly unequaled economic
strength—not only the largest profits in corporate history, but
profits which utterly dwarf those of any other U.S. industry. These
profits give the industry cash-on-hand with which to fundamentally
impact policy-making in a way which those whose concerns are peace,
human rights, the environment, economic justice, public health,
consumer rights, labor rights, and the like, cannot hope to equal.
This, in turn, allows the industry to exercise political control over
the government. This economic and political strength has just one
historical precedent: that of Standard Oil.

Critiquing the Industry.

LeVine’s aim in reviewing my book seems to be to defend Big Oil
against any criticism. It is very interesting, therefore, that LeVine
reserves his desperately critical analysis of my book almost
exclusively to the two chapters on history, while virtually ignoring
the book’s remaining seven chapters investigating the current state
of the U.S. refining and marketing sectors, the world and domestic
crude oil markets, the costs associated with the production of oil
from tar, shale or offshore, the development and undoing of U.S.
antitrust policy, the role of the oil industry within and on the Bush
administration, the industry’s influence over policy decision-making
in local, state, national, and international arenas, the growing use
of the U.S. military as an oil protective force, and the numerous
other policy prescriptions I make in the book in addition to my call
for breaking up the nation’s oil companies.

My goal in writing The Tyranny of Oil was to offer an analysis that
has been sourly missing in U.S. literature since the 1975 publication
of Anthony Sampson’s classic book, The Seven Sisters: an
unapologetically and vitally necessary in-depth and serious critique
of the current state of the U.S. oil industry which also raises the
voices of those not regularly heard on nightly news programs,
television commercials, and in books. It was also to make the case
that, just as in the time of Standard Oil, only another people’s
movement can effectively counter this great challenge to American
democracy.

– Antonia Juhasz, author, The Tyranny of Oil: the World’s Most
Powerful Industry-And What We Must Do To Stop It (HarperCollins,
October 2008).

http://thebushagenda.net/phplist/lt.php?id=bEVQBFZZVlJEBwkDSlMHClA%3D