| When
W. finally admitted that “America is addicted to
foreign oil,” he forgot to mention much of that
foreign oil belongs to countries whose governments, populations,
or both are openly hostile toward the United States. Only
a third of the world’s remaining oil reserves are
in NANI (the U.S. Department of Energy’s official
acronym for “non-Arab, non-Iranian”) states
and much of that oil belongs to socialist and anti-American
Venezuela. In short, in the very near future, the United
States will depend on countries with which it has strained,
if not overtly adversarial, relationships. And as the
gush of oil dwindles to a drip, a tumultuous geopolitical
era will begin.
So says Dilip Hiro’s new book, The Blood of the
Earth, a well-researched assessment of the world oil
situation and the global shake-up that it will precipitate.
Hiro predicts that oil production will peak between
2006 and 2017 and then taper into an irreversible fall.
Not only will world oil supplies dwindle, they will
be concentrated in a small number of developing countries
that, using their newfound dominance of the world’s
chief energy supply, will be increasingly able to push
their foreign policy agendas.
Compounding the stress of a dwindling supply, the continuing
industrialization of India and China — which Hiro
calls “ravenous meganations in dire search of
hydrocarbons” — will continueto push demand
for oil to record levels. Hiro predicts that the increased
oil shortages will shift the balance of global power
toward oil-exporting countries, leading to a frantic
and possibly cataclysmic struggle among oil importers
to find the energy to satisfy their military and economic
needs.
While the breadth of Hiro’s knowledge is impressive,
it is frequently deployed to excess, and the book often
reads more like a reference volume than a thesis-driven
argument. On top of this, a continuous string of diversions
cloud his core thesis. While some digressions are quite
interesting — including an analysis of Hugo Chavez’s
regime in Venezuela and a penetrating look into Iran
under the Shah — the majority of them are tedious.
Hiro’s propensity to list information is prevalent
throughout the book, but is most obvious in excruciating
sections on the romances of early oil explorers, the
local landmarks of Midland, Texas, and the technical
machinations of the original oil drills.
Blood is a noble attempt to add a geopolitical perspective
to the chorus of those crying out for a change in energy
policy, but the encyclopedic nature of the work cripples
its efficacy. Upon completion, one is left with the
sensation of having been exposed to a thoughtful, insightful
argument, but Hiro’s attempt to write an all-encompassing
volume on such a broad subject matter is more than he
can handle, and his readers pay the price for it. Time,
like oil, is a finite resource, and there is only so
much of it one is willing to spend sifting through Blood’s
catalogue of facts to get to the heart of the book buried
beneath its core.
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