The Price of Gas

OIL ON THE BRAIN

Adventures From the Pump to the Pipeline

By Lisa Margonelli

Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. 324 pp. $26

Before reading Lisa Margonelli's Oil on the Brain, I never would have called the process of energy production "fascinating." But this thoroughly engrossing and entertaining book travels to the heart of Texas and across continents to show exactly how the gas in our tanks gets there -- as well as its financial, social and environmental costs. Margonelli's dogged reporting, which includes pulling an all-nighter at a drilling rig and writing a "spicy" introduction letter to an Iranian government official to get access to his country's oil operations, exposes aspects of the oil industry that are not visible at your local pump.

Much of what Margonelli chronicles is grim, especially when she investigates how oil production has distorted petro-states such as Venezuela, Chad and Nigeria. Many Americans are now familiar with how Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has used his country's oil wealth to assert its independence from the United States, but they may not realize how many of Venezuela's poor still live in slums as they wait for some of Chávez's largesse to trickle down.

Chad and Nigeria are grimmer still, since their heads of state don't even claim that their countries' petrodollars might improve their citizens' lives. When an oil consortium led by Exxon-Mobil gave Chad's president, Idriss Déby, an advance of $25 million, Margonelli writes, he used the money to bolster his own political strength rather than to improve the lives of his citizens: "He immediately spent $4.5 million of it on weapons to fight rebels within his own borders."

In the small Nigerian village of Oloibiri, village elders wonder why Shell and other companies have extracted oil from their land and left them with nothing but a non-functioning water system and a rotting hospital and school, neither of which the companies paid to staff. "Millions and billions of dollars have left here," one elder tells her. "It's like a snail. They've taken the flesh and left the shell."

Margonelli paints only a slightly rosier picture of the U.S. oil industry, which she describes as on a steady path to decline. Seventy percent of American oil workers, she writes, have lost their jobs since 1981. Even the tanker truck dispatchers and gas station operators who make money off Americans' voracious gasoline consumption are under intense pressure to bet correctly on the constantly changing petroleum prices.

Oil on the Brain is at its best when the author manages to connect with the men and women she writes about, moving the energy debate beyond stereotypes. One of the most touching moments comes when Margonelli discovers that she and a fourth-generation oilman, C.D. Roper, both took care of sheep when they were younger. "C.D. and I are both unreformed sheep-loving nerds," she writes. "His pet lamb was named Rainbow, and sometime around midnight he begins to cry at the thought of the cruel uncle who killed Rainbow and ate him." Roper emerges as one of the book's most compelling characters, a man who has managed to make money in a tough, risky business and would consider quitting if he didn't get such an adrenaline rush from hitting pay dirt.

Margonelli uses lively, vivid prose to tell her story, though she over-writes at times and inserts herself too frequently into the narrative. (My least favorite line: "The hands are all young: Jeans, overalls, fresh pink cheeks, and carelessly spread dirt lend them the innocence of characters in a Norman Rockwell painting.") For the most part, however, she hits her mark by making wry observations, and she puts many of her stories in context with facts and figures that provide a broader sense of how the oil economy works.

The one thing the book lacks is concrete suggestions for how Americans can extricate themselves from what President Bush has called an "addiction to oil." In the epilogue, Margonelli alludes vaguely to the idea that the next oil gusher "may be in our brains," but aside from a general call for energy conservation, her book does little to show how that gusher might emerge. Still, by the end, Margonelli has demonstrated the one lesson she says she has learned: "There is no such thing as cheap gas." ·

Juliet Eilperin covers environmental issues for The Washington Post.