The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power by Daniel Yergin

Oil has repeatedly been referred to as any economy’s lifeblood. Whereas this is an overemphasis, oil has been the utmost key, nonhuman resource of economy throughout the largest part of the 20th century. In the book “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, And Power” by Daniel Yergin, the author illustrates the political, societal, economic, and geo-strategic prominence of this product. The book was published by Simon and Schuster in 2011 in New York, and contains 928 pages, as its ISBN is 1439134839. This research paper aims to provide a book review on Daniel Yergin’s “The Prize.”

The discovery of oil in a low-income country is often met with both excitement and dread. Many theories circle around the idea of a “resource curse” that supposedly affects countries with large amounts of resources. The resource curse essentially dictates that a country with large amounts of resources is not as likely to thrive as a country with low levels of resources. The issue with this view is that it generalizes too much; there is just as much variance in the levels of economic success between resource-rich countries as there is between them and resource-scarce countries. This is why this newly found oil in this country does not necessarily need to be met with dread, as there is a chance for success. However, this newly found potential for wealth needs to be handled with extreme care. In the following memo I will outline what the resource curse is, why some countries are affected by it and others not, and finally I will outline how this country should handle its newly found oil wealth.

The Prize, by Daniel Yergin, is an important book for me because it has to do with some of the biggest issues in the modern world: Oil, Money, and Power. This book was rated 4.37 out of 5 Based on 3,753 reviews on Goodreads. “Energy consultant Yergin limns oil 's central role in most of the wars and many international crises of the 20th century. A timely, information-packed, authoritative history of the petroleum industry, tracing its ramifications, national and geopolitical, to the present day.” - Publisher’s weekly.

In our society, oil is one of the core requirements. Whether it is to drive from a point A to a point B or to fly between distant countries, oil always had a fundamental impact on our civilization. Its impact is felt, on a daily basis and under many aspects. Not a day goes by without hearing about the Brent's changing undulation, on the markets in New York or London. Some have thought that the desire to gain control of Iran's oil resources was the core of the CIA's intervention in that country, in the 1950s. In recent years, it was considered, by left-wing groups, that the war in Iraq was based upon an attempt of foreign control over the Iraqi petroleum resources. Even though both events have an unquestioned place

The chapter by Manabu Shimizu focuses on Japan’s efforts in oil exploration and the country’s future goals in the oil industry. Since Japan imports all of its oil, the “challenge is to establish a long-term, sustainable oil supply” (Shimizu 113). Japan has begun to fund Central Asian oil exploration in the hopes of a big oil market being produced for that region. However, Japan does not intend to import oil from Central Asia, rather they want other regions to do import. By doing so, some of the production pressure is lifted from the Middle East, which is where most of Japan’s oil comes from. At the moment, the Middle East is the main producer of oil for many countries with great power over the market, and Japan hopes to create another market

Our world economy depends upon petroleum; petroleum, in fact, has shaped the modern world. It has dictated production technologies and methods. It has facilitated the emergence of a worldwide transportation network. It has allowed cites to grow and expand, and determined the spatial landscape of regions. Due to our great need for petroleum, the scope of OPEC¡¦s power surpasses our prowess as an economic superpower, considering OPEC regulates the output and the price of oil from their reserves.

Peter Maass, the author of “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil”, has been studying oil, oil rich countries, oil corporations, oil prices, and such for a decent amount of time now. In his novel, he zeroes in on the consequences that humankind faces due to their oil-hungry appetites through the explanation of oil related sins. Each chapter dives into a different sin relating to the disadvantages of living in a world where the demand for oil is so prominent. Some of these sins, for example, are Plunder, Rot, Fear, Greed, Containment, and Desire, plus more. Maass gives an in-depth analysis of how the humankind’s great dependence on oil in recent years has extreme repercussions besides the usual topic of running low on oil, climate

The featured article “The End of Oil,” the author, Alex Kuhlman argues that oil production is decreasing due to the costs of production are rising because cheap and easily accessible oil is hard to find despite increased consumption.(Kuhlman, 2007). Kuhlman (2007) provides evidence both from oil demand and supply aspects to illustrate the imbalance which causes the end of oil.

Senator Everett Dirksen once noted “The oilcan is mightier than the sword”. In today’s world, it is easy to see why oil can be considered the most important resource to hold. Without oil, many of the common day occurrences we take for granted would be impossible. Oil is used for almost everything; from the fuel used to drive our vehicles, to the plastics used in every facet of life, and providing the heat needed to live through the winter. In fact, the United States depends so much on oil that as a nation it uses over 20 million barrels a day. Importing oil increases the total costs because of the need to transport it from around the world. It is estimated

In terms of oil dependence, most of the general public believes that the world has enough oil to support us for the next hundred years; in truth we are rapidly depleting our petroleum sources due to the increasing population and demand. In fact, as was initially theorized by the Hubbert Peak Theory in 1950, Earth peaked in oil supplies in 1973 and the largest oil resources that have been discovered since then have been in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Here it must be

Two-thirds of the world’s remaining oil reserves are in the Middle East which will make international policy imperative in the future (Campbell 2007). It is

New and improved methods for extracting oil were being developed. Billions of dollars would be poured into the discovery of new wells and the hunt wasn’t slowing down. Governments were willing to do anything to secure a steady supply of oil, even if that meant fighting for it. Some of the most destructive world conflicts all started from the desire of that sticky liquid that comes from the ground. But on the positive side, oil has been at the base of some of the most important developments in modern history. Due to the speedy development of oil, a byproduct of the drilling process kick started the agricultural revolution, resulting in the rapid growth of the earth’s population. Millions of people can now eat due to the advancements of fertilizers, which main ingredient ammonia is produced from oil drilling. Oil became a huge part of society’s advancement in technology, and is still a driving force in the world of science and

The oil age has become an age of inequality. The discovery of oil has brought the wealth of a few people, and has brought misery to most people. Many oil rich countries suffer from the distortion of the economic development, the financial instability, the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, the serious

The global spread of oil drilling is connected to the reasons why oil was first exploited in the first place; it was plentiful, it had the highest energy density per weight, it was not already being exploited. Chief to the purpose of this paper on oil drilling lies in the words was and had. The fact that those words are in the past, and the idea that things superior to oil have come along, is something that needs to be brought up more often. The fact is that oil, as a resource, is simply out of date. The addiction that humanity has to ‘black gold’ is unprecedented in the history of mankind, and the reasons why this addiction is more dangerous than any standard addiction are numerous.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and President Vladimir Putin’s ascendency in the early 2000s, he and his government have been hell-bent on reclaiming Russia’s old title of a world superpower. In conjunction with his administration, Putin has commandeered Russia’s identity to the narrative of being an energy superpower by using the nation’s most effective weapon: the country’s energy resources. Peter Behr’s article for the Congressional Quarter Global Researcher titled “Energy Nationalism,” seeks to demonstrate and explain why and how Russia—in addition to other countries such as China and Venezuela—became so nationalistic and protective of its energy resources. Furthermore, “Since the oil age began more than a century ago, governments in the developing world—on both the right and left—have promised their people a fair share of the wealth…Instead, ‘black gold’ has spawned corruption, economic hardship, vast class differences and civil war” (Behr 2007). When politically creating a nation’s identity on the world’s stage, leaders incorporate the benefits and effects of human, material, and natural resources. Since these are constantly evolving variables, a country’s identity, particularly relating to natural resources, is constantly evolving as well. Nevertheless, Putin is reminiscing and effectively reenacting Russia’s energy production days in order to shape the narrative of being a geopolitical and energy superpower. However, prior to understanding and examining