The great hunt
The highlight of Hiro's book is his recapitulation of the way first Great Britain and then the US have consistently acted to subvert the fate of nations, ruthlessly exploited their people and whenever considered necessary in their national self-interest, organised death of the national leaders who resisted. Great Britain is now a spent force after losing the colonies but US colonisation, directly by the government (latest example Iraq) and indirectly by their oil companies aided by the CIA, continues unabated. The reason is not far to seek: as Hiro puts it "Whereas an average American uses 69 oil barrels a year and a Briton 32, a Chinese consumes only four barrels and an Indian two." Perhaps the worst disinformation campaign in history is that the oil prices are sky-rocketing and global warming is worsening (that is a laugh, coming from a nation which refuses to accept the Kyoto Declaration even today, never mind Al Gore!) because of growing demand in China and India. If petroleum is the Blood of the Earth, we know who the bloodsuckers are. |
Hiro does miss out on the Refinery Agreements of 1952 and the way Jawaharlal Nehru and KD Malviya saved India from becoming another oil colony (as a market, in this case). He also misses out on the suicidal circus on oil pricing in India, and also on the vaudeville of companies owned by the same entity "" the people of India "" "competing" against each other.
There are, sadly for a book of this genre, a series of inaccurate or questionable statements. Consider the "Preface to the Indian Edition". The author's case is that the 1973 oil shock destabilised India's economy, leading to high inflation, mass demonstrations, the Opposition getting 'emboldened (sic)', and, finally, leading to the emergency after Mrs Gandhi was found guilty of electoral malpractice. The fact is that the Indian consumer was kept insulated from the oil shock through the Pooled Price mechanism. Also, the fact is that there was national euphoria on discovery of the super-giant Bombay High Oil & Gas field by ONGC in February 1974. The Arab-Israeli war and Mrs Gandhi asking one of her officials to act as her election agent were two entirely unrelated events in space and time!
The lone instance of effective oil diplomacy for India happened in 2001, during the NDA regime; this was the Sakhalin I deal, for which credit goes to the Ambassador of India in Moscow and the Prime Minister of the time. The Petroleum Ministry piloted the deal for LNG import from Qatar, from 1997 (when Petronet LNG Ltd. was conceptualised) through to 2004, when the deal was finalised. Barring these two instances, all the hype of "Oil Diplomacy" has neither secured a single barrel of oil nor a single cubic metre of gas. As a matter of fact, several major deals concluded by ONGC Videsh Ltd were delayed or disallowed by the UPA government, and these were happily and promptly picked up by the Chinese.
In this excellently researched book, the reference to 'oil wells of Qatar' is perhaps a typo. On the subject of Sino-Indian collaboration in securing oil & gas interests in third countries, one can't blame Hiro, who obviously went by what he was told. The fact is that the formation of Himalaya Energy, a 50:50 joint venture between ONGC and CNPC in Syria, was done at the corporate level, and the ministry was informed when the time came for Cabinet approval; the same is true for Manasarovar Energy!
The sub-title for Hiro's book is "The battle for the World's vanishing oil resources". There are several battles, not one. There's a battle for exploration, which is now extended to the Arctic sea-bed; there's a battle for getting better qualities and higher yields; there's a battle for renewables which are commercially usable for land, sea and air transportation, and so on. The book misses out on the most important battle "" conservation of a non-renewable energy resource; all are guilty on this count "" the Americans, the Chinese, the Indians and everyone else. That perhaps requires another book.
The author, former Chairman, ONGC Group Companies, is currently Chairman, trIdea
BLOOD OF THE EARTH
THE BATTLE FOR THE WORLD'S VANISHING OIL RESOURCES
Dilip Hiro
Penguin Books
427 pages; Rs 395