Oil, gas and coal

The history of oil from the first Pennsylvania well to the Gulf War.

Why oil booms left Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria and others with unstable states.

A short technical primer on oil: geology, extraction, refining, uses and reserves.

Energy from 1990 to 2011: Russian and Caspian oil, Iraq, climate policy, renewables.

Why oil-rich countries have less democracy, less stability and more civil war.

Energy and geopolitics in 2020: US shale, Russia, China and the Middle East.

The big international oil companies and how the 1973 embargo took away their control.

How coal built empires and economies, and the death and pollution it caused.

The fight for Caspian Sea oil from the 19th century to the present.

The wildcatters, from George Mitchell to Harold Hamm, who started the shale boom.

How Africa's oil and minerals are extracted in ways that leave its people poorer.

Saudi Arabia told through its oil business, from the 1930s concession to Aramco.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and Exxon's response, reported from Alaska.

How oil revenue let rulers buy out the merchant families; the origin of the modern business elite.

The peak-oil case against Saudi reserve claims; wrong but influential.

How Norway designed its oil licensing system, told by the geologist behind it.

Norway is the counterexample the whole volume is arranged around.

How Abu Dhabi's oil wealth built the emirate and gave rise to its sovereign funds.

Petrodollar recycling and the boom-bust cycle Gulf investors keep repeating.

The rise and fall of the Texas oil fortunes, the Hunts among them.

The Niger Delta oil economy reported at ground level.

Why ownership structure, not oil itself, set post-Soviet states' fortunes.

Exxon from the 1973 oil shock to 2005, written with access to its own archive.

Mining and hydrocarbon conflict in the Andes; the social licence problem.

The mechanics of subsidised fuel, multiple exchange rates and arbitrage as a national industry.

Argues price stability always required a swing producer or cartel.

Canada's oil sands as a business: costs, capital and politics.

How the Gulf monarchies' cheap domestic energy became their central fiscal problem.

A trader's technical primer on oil barrels, grades, refining and pricing.

Fixers, traders and middlemen in the oil trade.