Oil & Ideology
The Cultural Creation of the American Petroleum Industry
by Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Olien

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      It has long been a major curiosity of mine that the petroleum industry, in spite of its almost immeasurable contribution to the modern world, enjoys a reputation with the general public that falls somewhere between “Atilla the Hun” and “Jack the Ripper.”  And, after working in the “aw bidness”, as they say in Texas, I found little personal evidence to support the common public opinion of the industry as a jackbooted plunderer of the earth’s sacred resources.  So, when I read of this book in an SPE publication, I ordered it and added it to the stack.

      The authors teach at the University of Texas in Midland and the book is essentially a history of the ebb and flow of the public opinion about the oil industry as evidenced by newspapers and other publications.  Oil & Ideology is very well researched, thoroughly cited and has an extensive bibliography.  The writing is scholarly and objective.  My impression is that the book was written to be used as a text book for advanced college history classes.  I did satisfy my curiosity and learned more than I had imagined about the oil business by reading the book.

      Edwin Drake’s first well was complete in August 1859 and within a few weeks, Venango County in western Pennsylvania was completely leased.  By April 1860, prices had topped out at $26.00 per barrel, but with a total national demand of about 2000 barrels per day and soaring production, prices crashed to five cents per barrel.  The industry has been trying to stabilize the price of crude ever since.  An interesting predecessor to OPEC was the Texas Railroad Commission, the Texas petroleum industry’s regulatory body, who in April 1931, in order to limit “economic waste”, used the state militia to enforce pro-rationing of production from the giant East Texas field, discovered by “Dad” Joiner, just seven moths earlier.

      A significant portion of the book deals with John D. Rockefeller and the rise of Standard Oil.  The eventual anti-trust actions initiated by the journalist Ida Tarbell (who was the daughter of a small oil operator forced to sell his company to Standard Oil) and the breakup of Standard Oil (which left Rockefeller with even greater wealth) have left an indelible and very negative image of the industry on the public mind.

     From its inception, the oil industry has suffered from unscrupulous promoters, a messy black product and great wealth.  All these issues and the general public’s poor understanding of the industry’s complexities combined with the lack of a uniform industry position have allowed writers and reporters to say what they will in order to move public opinion to suit the agenda of the day.  And, as always, sensationalism sells the news.

     The government and its politicians have had their “nose in the then” since the earliest days of the business when a combination of complaints about a lack of regulation, common swindling and the smell of excess money eventually allowed the state and federal governments to do something about all three.  Today the government makes more in taxes off a barrel of crude oil and its products than does the producer of the oil.

     Perhaps the largest lesson Oil & Ideology has to offer is that generally, the industry has always suffered from the ills that still plague it today and oil has gone from being the hero to being the goat in several cycles over the past 150 years.  From riding to victory in World War I on El Dorado crude, World War II on East Texas production and the Cold War on excess Saudi production, our government and its politicians have manipulated public opinion and the oil producers to suit their ends since the Civil War.

     Although Oil & Ideology can’t be called light reading, it is an excellent and unique history of the petroleum industry and well worth the effort. An, as the authors state in their conclusion, “…if the past remains a guide to the future, unless the role of public discourse is addressed and assessed and old ideas are reexamined, it will be hard to avoid misperceptions and misfires in future public policy relating to petroleum.  It is time to reconstruct the cultural construction of oil.” 
 

Bob Stolzle
6/21/02