The oil road : journeys from the Caspian Sea to the city of London / James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello.

  • Marriott, James
Date:
2012
  • Books

About this work

Description

"In a unique journey from the oil fields of the Caspian Sea to the refineries and financial centres of Northern Europe, James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello track the concealed routes along which flows the lifeblood of our economy. The stupendous resource of Azerbaijani crude has long inspired dreams of a world remade. From the revolutionary Futurism of the capital city, Baku, in the 1920s to the unblinking Capitalism of modern London, the drive to control the regionʹs oil reserves -- and hence people and events -- has shattered environments and shaped societies. In The Oil Road, the human scale of village life in the Caucasus Mountains and the plains of Anatolia is suddenly, and sometimes fatally, confronted by the almost ungraspable scale of the oil corporation BP. Pipelines and tanker routes tie the fraying social democracies of Italy, Austria and Germany to the repressive regimes of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. A web of financial and political institutions in London stitches together the lives of metropolis and village." -- From dust jacket.

Publication/Creation

London ; Brooklyn, NY : Verso, 2012.

Physical description

xiv, 362 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Contributors

Related material

This item was donated as part of the Godfrey Boyle archive held by Wellcome Collection, reference PP/GBO https://wellcomecollection.org/works/t5pbagvp

Notes

Copy 1. Donor: Godfrey Boyle.

Contents

Part I. The wells. 1. It has to be the Caspian -- 2. You can see where the president gets his iron gloves -- 3. They alone can light for us the road to the promised land -- 4. Lots of empty skyscrapers that we can't keep clean --- Part II. The road. 5. The wide stream of oil gushed over the greasy earth -- 6. If the pipeline burns, I'll burn with it -- 7. Schrader's instruction is paper for the toilet -- 8. Do you have any books? -- 9. Without having to amend local laws, we went above or around them by using a treaty -- 10. We closed it down to the media -- 11. We live in a corridor of violence -- 12. It is ash to the eyes -- 13. I will stop you, I'll smash your camera! -- 14. No-one wants this pipeline on their CV. It's an embarrassment -- 15. The trench sides could collapse on top of children -- 16. Don't sleep -- save your sea -- Part III. The ship. 17. Military forces sanitise the area ahead of the merchant ships -- Part IV. The road. 18. They have long arms-- like the arms of an octopus -- 19. The Caspian! -- Part V. The factory. 20. This is the Auschwitz Generation, and there's no arguing with them -- 21. A liquid distilled from a fossilised ecosystem.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references (pages 345-353) and index.

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Subjects

Where to find it

  • LocationStatusAccess
    Closed stores
    M30607

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Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9781844676460
  • 1844676463