San Antonio College Library

In the 1970s and 1980s the Texas wildcatter was a recognizable figure in popular culture. Since then, the wildcatter's role is less celebrated but still important, as shown in the new introduction to this edition of a book originally published in 1984 by Texas Monthly Press.

A leading activist presents a report on the U.S. oil industry to argue that oil companies hold an unparalleled influence over the government, are not appropriately regulated, and are misrepresenting the truth about the causes of high gasoline prices.

"Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises studies the causes of the current oil and global financial crisis and shows how America's and the world's growing dependence on oil has created a repeating pattern of banking, currency, and energy-price crises. Unlike other books on the current financial crisis, which have focused on U.S. indebtedness and American trade and economic policy, Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises shows the reader a more complex picture in which...

"The Middle Eastern and North African region (MENA) dominates world energy exports today and will likely do so for decades to come, even if world consumers make steady progress in conservation, renewable energy sources, and increases from gas, coal, and nuclear power. The MENA region, however, has been the scene of birth internal crises and external conflicts. On several occasions, these crises have affected either the flow of MENA energy exports...

Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In Poisoned Wells, Nicholas Shaxson exposes...

Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. What explains this oil curse? And can it be fixed? In this analysis, the author looks at how developing nations are shaped by their mineral wealth, and how they can turn oil from a curse into a blessing. He traces the oil curse to the upheaval of the 1970s, when oil prices soared and governments across the developing...

"Steve A. Yetiv argues that common assumptions about oil markets are wrong. Although prices remain volatile, Yetiv's account portrays a world market in petroleum products far more benign and predictable than the one to which we are accustomed. In Crude Awakenings, he identifies and analyzes real and potential threats to the global energy supply, including wars, revolutions, coups, dangerous alliances, oil embargoes, Islamic radicalism, and transnational...

Looks at how the energy resources in Texas have influenced politicians and advanced economic interests of the oil industry.