Seizing Power: The Grab for Global Oil Wealth

Seizing Power

The Grab for Global Oil Wealth

by Robert Slater 

"In Seizing Power, Robert Slater takes a whole new slant on the oil issue, offering for the first time an analysis of how the ongoing oil crisis could trigger increased turbulence, even violence between the new breed of petroaggressors.”  Matthew R. Simmons, Chairman Emeritus, Simmons & Company International

and author of Twilight in the Desert

 In SEIZING POWER:  The Grab for Global Oil Wealth (Wiley/Bloomberg Press; July 2010; $29.95; Hardcover), author Robert Slater discusses the rising danger of global oil power as it has shifted over the past several decades into the hands of a few newly wealthy nations. Page by page, he asks and answers important questions regarding the present oil supremacy and reveals what the future political landscape could look like. Topics touched upon include:

• Growing consumption by India and China
• The new Middle East, including Iran, the UAE, and the Saudis
• Peak oil, speculators, and the volatile price problem
• The risks of Russian oil
• Drilling at home and abroad
• South America: Venezuela and Brazil
• The ethics of the oil business
• Oil power in Africa

“The main theme of the book is this: The world supply of oil is running out – and the latest oil spill in the Gulf is but the latest, jarring reminder that the world will one day face a dramatic crisis as the time approaches when there is no more oil,” says Slater.

The crisis will perhaps not come tomorrow, but it will come, as oil is more and more depleted. The answer is apparent: finding another cost-efficient fuel to run the engines of industry in the developed and developing world.

Meanwhile, however, as developing countries seek a middle-class existence, their demand for oil grows exponentially, causing oil prices to spiral, turning some into international bullies.

These petroaggressors (Russian, Iran, Venezuela and others) seek to capitalize on a new global phenomenon: the shift of oil power from the developing world to Third World countries. As oil makes them more powerful, they become increasingly greedy.

Until another fuel is found the world risks being at the mercy of these tyrants whose insatiable appetites for higher oil prices heighten competition and spur the threat of violence, domestic as well as global.    

About the Author

Robert Slater has written about such major business personalities as George Soros, Jack Welch, and Bill Gates. His books have appeared on the BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times bestseller lists. Slater lives in Israel and New York.

Seizing Power

The Grab for Global Oil Wealth

By Robert Slater

Wiley; July 2010; $29.95; Hardcover

ISBN:  978-1-57660-247-8