Entrepreneur to Oil Baron
590735
I have collaborated with part of the Hess team with their admirable work to use natural gas that would be flared to fuel operations in the Bakken but did not know the company's history.

I enjoyed reading about Leon Hess, the entrepreneur, the visionary, the risk taker as well as the loyal family man, friend and philanthropist.

The chapters related to expanding downstream operations and refineries as demand grew in the U.S. after the war were especially interesting because my experience in the industry has been upstream.

His vision to invest in a broad-based industry and create jobs is from an era before companies were managed by their quarterly earnings reports.

His son, family and the company are respected and well-positioned in the industry having weathered the early years of the shale revolution.

The book is well written and shares insight of a successful but private man who built a successful public company.

I bought a copy for my father for Christmas.  I look forward to hearing his thoughts on the history of Hess.
298777
A very easy to read account of a man's effort to try to get the government to correct a serious problem. His efforts to get something done about the oil price manipulation were described with humor and frustration. Some situations you have to either cry or laugh. I would rather laugh. Marc has been banging his head against the wall. We all wish him luck on his journey.
332194
This is a true story  the oil bonanza found on indian land and  the corrupt  authorities that tried everything to steal it from them. Note : I read a mention of this scandal in the WSJ a few days ago
2920021
As an entrepreneur who experienced a fall from grace after reaching the pinnacle of business success in Japan, Janice Dison journey of rags to riches, to rags, is one that hits home.  Through determination, grit, and unyielding ambition, the author pulls herself up by her own boot strap and finds hard-earned success with the establishment of a court reporting enterprise in Los Angeles.  Wealth brings not only opulence, but an opportunity rub elbows with the rich and famous.  Her mansion in Bel Air aides that cause.  All that changed when her largest client, The City of Los Angeles faced bankruptcy, and was forced to slash its budget to the bone.  And just like that, Janice looses her business.  The slow-road to the bottom is as painful, as it is immensely humbling.  The book is filled with insight, wisdom, as well as shocking revelations. And for those nouveau cash-rich individuals who think it cant happen to them, Janice Dison's tell-all memoir is a must read.&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/21-Years-of-Wisdom-One-Man-s-Extraordinary-Odyssey-in-Japan/dp/B01M5E1O4L/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">21 Years of Wisdom: One Man's Extraordinary Odyssey in Japan</a>
4525300
Everyone knows the seven sisters: Standard Oil (Exxon), Royal Dutch Shell, Anglo-Iranian Oil (British Petroleum), Texaco, Socony (then Mobil), Gulf, and Standard Oil California (Chevron). Gulf, Texaco merged with Chevron.  Exxon merged with Mobil. Seven became four. French Total merged with Fina, is another giant.  Very few people knew anything about the Middle East oil companies.  This book covers 5 of them: 1. Abu Dubai National Oil Company (ADNOC), 2. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), 3. National Iran Oil Company (NIOC), 4. Saudi Arabia Aramco, and 5. Sonatrach of Algeria.  The government owns at least 51% of these national oil companies. In the west, most oil engineers are 50 years old.  In these 5 companies, majority are young men, 25 to 30 years old. They speak English, make nice PowerPoint presentation, and have good IT skills.  They are learning the oil business and they are very proud to be employed by the national oil firms. The rest of the countries are not doing well, even with the high oil rents collected by the government. Oil rents cannot be the only source of income.  These government need to develop other industries to provide jobs for the young.  Other OPEC countris: Iraq, Qatar, Libya, Indonesia, Venezuela have national oil companies too. It has good coverage on National Oil Libya, Petronas of Malaysia, Petrobras Brazil, Pertamina Indonesia, Qatar National Gas Company, Statoil Norway, Nigeria National Petroleum Corp, Petroleos De Venezuela SA(PDVSA), Pemex Mexico, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), and Gazprom Russia. With the increasing global demand and the rise of the oil prices, these companies need to train their engineers, collaborate with the 5 international oil giants, and continue to develop pipelines and distributions.  Their work is cut out for them for the next 20 years. I recommend this book for any one who wishes to learn the global oil buiness. It would be better if CEOs, company information, websites of these five firms are included.
1388093
This is a tell-all story from the author who received a chance of a lifetime opportunity out of college to join an international company and travel the world while garnering a huge salary and wield tremendous influence to developing companies.

Like a slow moving dream, the opportunity begins to peel away and expose an ugly underside.  The opportunities the author is influencing are corrosive, and the debts the foreign countries are incurring can never be repaid.

The author begins to understand his complicity in this tale of US empire building, and decides he must change his lifestyle, and career.

Special animus is given to our recent administrations for handling foreign affairs in Venezuela, Iraq and Ecuador to name a few policies, and George W Bush, in particular.  Yet, the author also finds fauult with the Reagan and Bush 1 administrations for their policies of US strong-arm toward governments who would not fall in line as puppet Governments.  He seems to point toward conspiracies of CIA involvement in the the disappearance and plane mishaps of several foreign government leaders.  He makes compelling cases.

In the end, he does make life and lifestyle changes and makes some prescient predictions.

His story caused me to rethink and reevaluate some of my thoughts on the policies and politics which have been pretty entrenched over the years.

An excellent read!
547709
I worked on a deal for one of the majors and wanted to get a feel for the industry.  Besife Tonwe, one of our oil consultants, suggested it.  I read it in 4 days, despite the fact that i was putting in 9 hour days.  Fantastic read.
2901088
This exhaustive biography of John D. Rockefeller fully explains a misunderstood man.  Ron Chernow has caught the essence of the man.  Mr. Rockefeller was neither entirely good nor was he the Robber Baron as depicted by Ida Tarbell.  He was a man of contradictions .  He was deeply religious, however in the business world he would squash his business competition like a bug.
  When you think of Rockefeller you think of Oil as in "Standard Oil".  However, as Chernow points out it was Mr. Rockefeller's logistical distribution system which made Standard Oil the titan of the Oil Industry.  It was J.D.'s controlling of the Railroads and later the Pipelines which led to his huge monopoly in the Oil Industry.
  This book explains his development of oil cartels and interlocking directorates.  As he grew older he became ever so more eccentric and increasingly philantropical.  He was indeed both the good cop and the bad cop.
  This is an excellent book.  It is well worth the reading of 676 pages.  But who's counting!!  In the end you"ll find the essence of a true businessman who was misunderstood.
4730853
I recently finished Steve Coll's latest book, Private Empire about ExxonMobile, and so thoroughly enjoyed the book that I immediately read this book, his 1987 study of another oil company, Getty Oil.  The two books make an excellent contrast during different eras of the US oil industry.  Private Empire discusses the post-Valdez industry increasingly focused on finding oil reserves in difficult and dangerous parts of the globe, while The Taking of Getty Oil describes the US oil industry, and particularly Getty Oil, after the emergence of OPEC as clueless about sources of future oil supplies.  When the spike in oil prices, and thus profits, led to huge windfall profits in the oil industry, companies like Getty were so clueless about the future of their own industry that they bought ludicrously unrelated companies.  Getty bought CNN and an insurance company.  This is in sharp contrast to ExxonMobil portrayed in Private Empire as laser-focused on every aspect of the oil business in every corner of the world.

There are strong characters why steer ExxonMobil and its subsidiaries, sharply portrayed in Private Empire, but in the Getty story the characters are the book.  And that plays to Coll's strengths.  He is a master at presenting three-dimensional characters.  To none of the larger than life characters in this book could a simple phrase such as good, evil or greedy be used.  Each of the main players has a complex mix of rationalizations and base needs that play out in the narrative, but none are unsympathetic.  Except Gordon Getty.  Wow!

Old man Getty is not exactly a relaxed, loving father.  No, he seemed to dislike all of his kids, installing the one he disliked the least as his heir at Getty Oil.  But the suicide of that son requires the old man to decide which remaining son he disliked the least, and not surprisingly selected Gordon.  Of the two other sons, one was a junky and the other the son of the wrong mother (long story).  Gordon is thus appointed as one of two trustees of a Getty Trust that owns 40% of Getty Oil shares.  When the other trustee dies soon after the old man, the most powerful person at Getty Oil is Gordon.  Gordon lived, and still lives, in a mansion in San Francisco, and has spent most of his energy as a music composer.  He was completely unsuited and unqualified to provide direction to Getty Oil, yet he refused to leave the company alone.  It was his company.  Anyone who has ever had a boss completely clueless yet demonically demanding will appreciate the struggle of the Getty Oil executives trying in vain to satisfy Gordon's whims.

Finally Gordon's actions put Getty Oil in play, and bigger characters than Getty managers make the pilgrimage to San Francisco to convince Gordon of the wisdom of their various schemes.  But no one ever convinces Gordon of anything.  When it is clear that the Getty executives have wasted months of their lives trying in vain to explain technical aspects of oil industry accounting that Gordon insists on receiving, they realize the company will be sold, and they will probably all lose their jobs.  They had only one consolation...no more Gordon!
4879689
I will Bet the Book can fit in a Scott E Vest pocket.

This book will bring out the entrepreneur in you as the author,
gives you a front seat to his life's journey.  The book is a transparent
story which takes you through the high's and lows of Scott's personal
and professional life.  There are many great anecdotes, quotes, and
small stories you can borrow to have a winnable game, and realize
the challenges and triumphs in bringing a product to market.
Scott's swim through the shark invested water's of the TV show shark tank,
are well documented and fascinating.
I'm at a loss on a few of the one star reviews, as I have read a ton of Biz Memoirs,
and this book was truly one of my favorites.
You will love this book, I did.
154189
The book overall was a good story with a fair amount of history included.  Reminds us of how big oil works even today. Good political statement for the times
2371000
It too me forever to plough through lengthy work, but it is an excellent book that tells the interesting story of the evolution of the global oil industry.  From Colonel Drake and the early oil barons, to the series of nationalizations that put this resource back in the hands of its rightful owners, the book read very well.
3996353
Nikiforuk is very experienced and passionate journalist who has written other excellent books about the tar sands and the bark beetle epidemic in the West. He's extremely thorough in his reporting, writes well and tells a fine story. Energy of Slaves puts our oil addiction into a long-term historical perspective. Based in Calgary, Nikiforuk knows the Canadian oil world all too well. The Canadian oil barons and their political lackeys make Texas look almost moderate...
176120
Really enjoyed this book. I am in the oil and gas industry so I enjoyed seeing the different aspects of it from his perspective. He was wrong in saying that new technology will not enable us to discover more oil. Book was published in 2008 and shortly after that the shale boom came along thanks to, "New Technology". Did not make me look at this book any different because no one really saw the shale boom coming. Now the U.S. is set to be the top oil producer by 2015. Enough with the facts, give it a read you will enjoy it. I hope his plan for natural gas takes off, from what I can see it is catching hold. Have seen more fleets in the news lately going with nat gas thanks to his company Clean Energy Fuels installing the infrastructure for them to do so.
3094430
He gets roughed up more than a superhero but Dev has good values and realistic good friends.  I really enjoyed the  oil.
4168675
"Let my people go surfing" by Yvonne Chouinard is a travel adventure book rather unusual for in its genre! Chouinard, a climber and explorer does not tell about the story of reaching far ends of the world, you will not find much about types of crampons or belaying  techniques either. Yet "Let my people go surfing" is a story about Chouinard's fascinating journey to the world of entrepreneurship and business. In his young days, dreaming of becoming a trapper, the Author discovered that climbing is his destiny and devoted most of his free time to ropes, rocks and pitons. Soon he started producing pitons, designing them, producing all sorts of outdoor equipment. This led his company, Patagonia to be one of the leaders in the market with annual turnover of 350MUSD. In the book, Chouinard does not only tell the story of Patagonia but - perhaps even more important - he shares his philosophy of what a successful company should be.

At first, his ideas, rooted in sustainable development and respect to people and nature, appeared to me inapplicable to the business world where success should be measured by profit and turnover. However, as I continued reading, I realized that such approach is more than appropriate to building a stable, robust business which will be capable of thriving in the constantly changing markets. I enjoyed this unconventional approach to management and thinking of business responsibilities towards employees, society and the environment. Undoubtedly, Chouinard was one of the pioneers who, today, have the constantly increasing number of followers. The book is written well, with wit and is an easy, pleasant and inspiring read.
2013646
Hot, hot story!  Very interesting look into the oil industry, with added ranching and cowboy action.