Shows readers how we can all help solve the climate crisis by focusing on a few key, achievable actions.

This is a book about the international oil market. It takes a historical perspective on how the market emerged, developed, and became what it is today—the biggest commodity market in the world. It is mature and complex, but far from perfect. Throughout most of its 150-year history, the oil market has been monopolised by companies and governments. For only a fraction of that, oil traded in a relatively free market. As a result, we had to live with ‘big oil’, economic shocks, high oil prices, instability and wars. Using a simple concept of market power, this book will explain the meaning of ‘oil price’ and how it is established while offering a valuable lesson for other commodities. Market power is the key to understanding the ‘price of oil’. This book uses a simple concept of price-makers and price-takers to examine the evolution of oil markets, their structure, and prices. The early decades of the oil industry were competitive with low barriers to entry. Barely 25 years later, the Standard Oil company created a refining monopoly, buying oil at its own ‘posted’ price. In the following century, the cartel of major oil companies, helped by their governments, did the same at the international level. OPEC helped producing governments regain control of their own resources, but the organisation was never able to retain a similar level of control. After 1986 price collapse, OPEC abdicated the price-making function in favour of the market. While it never gave up attempts to influence prices, OPEC had to link their official prices to one of the global oil benchmarks. Modern international oil markets function because of oil benchmarks such as Brent, WTI and Dubai. This book showcases: • How oil traders played a prominent role in development of the industry • How policies of consuming nations helped oil cartels • Why and how the US price of oil was negative • How AI has changed the way markets operate and the way in which the markets are likely to change in future This book explores how oil markets grew, functioned, and have occasionally failed to do their job. The ecosystem of derivatives or ‘paper barrels’ trading in far greater volume than physical oil plays a very important role in mitigating risk. With this core tenant, setting the ‘price of oil’ is explained in detail.

“A brilliant, revisionist argument that places oil companies at the heart of 20th century history—and of the political and environmental crises we now face.” —Guardian Oil is a curse, it is often said, that condemns the countries producing it to an existence defined by war, corruption and enormous inequality. Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East. In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order. In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

The oil market is undergoing fundamental change. New technologies are increasing the supply of oil from old and new sources, while rising concerns over the environment are seeing the world gradually moving away from oil. This spells a significant challenge for oil-exporting countries, including those of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) who account for a fifth of the world’s oil production. The GCC countries have recognized the need to reduce their reliance on oil and are all implementing reforms to diversify their economies as well as fiscal and external revenues. Nevertheless, as global oil demand is expected to peak in the next two decades, the associated fiscal imperative could be both larger and more urgent than implied by the GCC countries’ existing plans.

The energy transition requires substantial amounts of metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium. Are these metals a key bottleneck? We identify metal-specific demand shocks, estimate supply elasticities and pin down the price impact of the energy transition in a structural scenario analysis. Metal prices would reach historical peaks for an unprecedented, sustained period in a net-zero emissions scenario. The total value of metals production would rise more than four-fold for the period 2021 to 2040, rivaling the total value of crude oil production. Metals are a potentially important input into integrated assessments models of climate change.

This volume presents a detailed study of the climate strategies of ExxonMobil, Shell, and Statoil. With an innovative analytical approach, the authors explain variations at three decision-making levels: within the companies themselves, in the national home-bases of the companies, and at the international level. The analysis generates policy-relevant knowledge about whether and how corporate resistance to a viable climate policy can be overcome.