Re: Take One Witch...(I'm Melting, Melting!!!!..)

[Michael Pugliese <debsian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

              Mark Jones wrote:
>Of course (as some of us have argued all along) the >Caspian is
>hardly the 200bn bbl bonanza which experts in the Wall >Street
>Journal et al were enthusing about two years ago; as we >have
>argued here and elsewhere, the low oil prices of recent >times
>were a mirage and the future will be one of rising prices
>and growing primary energy shortages. Nevertheless the >fSU's
>energy resources, depleted as they are, are essential to >the
>future stability of west European capitalism. Without >Central
>Asian oil and Siberian gas, the prosperity of Europe will
>be unsustainable. It's the politics of this which we have to
>think about when defining our attitude towards events in
>the Balkans or the Caucasus and Central Asia.

      To get up to speed on this does Mark have any recent cites from left
or bourgeois academics, journalists, or activists on the oil economy? Years
ago I read Anthony Sampson, "The Seven Sisters," on the big seven oil
giants. Sampson is a mild liberal, (think he split from British Labour, when
the right rump formed the SDP in the early 80's). I know of a Monthly Review
Press book by Michael Tanzer
entitled the ,"Political Economy of the Oil Industry" or something close to
that, but it dates from the OPEC "Gas Crisis" back in early 70's. Likewise
an even earlier book,"The Politics of Oil," by John Engler(?), who used to
write for The Nation. Any good area studies journal from the left like the
Middle East R.I.P.(MERIP) or the Bulletin of Concerned Asia Scholars, exist
in Central Asia studies?
                                                       Michael Pugliese