Short Review: The Seven Sisters

Short Review of, "The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Made" by Anthony Sampson, Hodder and Stoughton, 1975, ISBN 0 340 19427 8

This book came into my hands quite by fluke while pawing through the stacks at The Odd Book.

http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/theoddbook/ It came out of there at a price of $2.oo which was a rare find considering the usual prices there are somewhat higher.

The book details lots of interesting historical accounts of the global oil-catting industry. http://www.h-net.org/~business/bhcweb/publications/BEHprint/v024n1/p0135-p0146.pdf#search=%22oilmen%20making%20love%20%22

However having followed a Harvard educated Ph.D. candidate through the streets and narrows of Baku in 2001 I did feel that Sampson has missed some of the marks that led to the explosive growth attributed to Shell Oil Company and the Noble brothers. His book suggests few instances of completely non-Russian influenced dealings on the Caspian Sea which would preclude the two known take-overs nationalisations of the fields under the Russian yolk according to local experts. Thus no periods of non-governmental control over either production, process, or profits are noted in The Seven Sisters. However Baku natives will tell the stories, and the local barons and catters who emerged as millionaires from the murky oil soaked mires are well remembered, as are their vast architectural legacies all produced during a brief period of wild-west inspired independence prior to and between the world wars.

A few bio-fuel enthusiasts thought this title so important that they have published Chapters 8-14 in their entirety. http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/sevensisters/7sistersToC.html

Wikipedia also includes some ready reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(oil_companies)

It would be hoped readers might remind their government representatives of the day that alternatives to oil must be the priority of all business futures. http://journeytoforever.org/ Reading "The Seven Sisters" will surely relate that much of the current past century of conflict has revolved around oil and through the nations that:

• possess it
• process it
• buy and sell it
• exist merely on paper as border areas through which it is piped

Global business might prove the term innovation by doing without oil sooner rather than later. It is said business processes only ever change out of necessity. So the hope that it runs dry before humanity does is fairly wishful thinking but perhaps the only reality through which such monopolies will have had their day.