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This chapter describes how computers came into the petroleum, chemical, and pharmaceutical process and manufacturing industries. It argues that computers fundamentally changed the nature of work in all three, making each “high tech,” and discusses how this came about. It also describes the extent of deployment and recent trends in each in the use of information technology.

This chapter addresses the development of the Norwegian Petroleum Innovation System. While the initial phase of the petroleum development of Norway in the 1960s was characterized by an absorptive capacity of receiving new technology, the building of Norwegian competence in the 1970s and 1980s was, in certain respects, directly shaped by public policy so that participatation could occur. With the Condeep design it became possible to speak of an independent Norwegian petroleum industry. In the R&D system of Norway, petroleum education and research were introduced at several levels. Due to new cost-efficient technologies introduced in the 1990s, we may say that the adjustment was concluded by the beginning of 21st century. The Norwegian oil and gas actors perceived themselves ready to participate fully in the international system of energy producers.

This chapter explores the nature of vertical integration. It also analyses the ability of transaction-cost economics to deal with vertical integration. The chapter begins by analysing the foundations of transaction-cost economics. It then examines vertical integration in the petroleum industry and long-term contracts as a substitute for vertical integration. Finally, the chapter compares decision-making characteristics in markets and hierarchies.

This chapter is divided into five sections. Section I provides a brief introduction to the topic. Section II gives a background account of the Ok Tedi case, its facts, issues for determination, and settlement of the case. Section III examines the implication of the Ok Tedi case for the mining and petroleum industries. Section IV attempts to offer advice on how to contend with the challenges that the emerging trend will pose for the mining and petroleum industries. Section V concludes the discussion. The public participation in the Ok Tedi case took the most prominent form of access to justice, that is, the legal class action. The lesson in this case is very clear. If the public does not have the opportunity of access to information and participation in decision-making at an earlier stage of project development, they will subsequently resort to the last possible remedy of litigation for justice.

This chapter examines the challenge of state control with regard to the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). It considers how the state utilizes economic statecraft in the context of efforts to secure oil through the creation and subsequent “going out” of the Chinese national oil corporations, which were among the earliest Chinese commercial actors to venture abroad. The chapter begins with a historical background on China's petroleum industry and its relationship to the Chinese state before turning to a discussion of the CNPC's early efforts to venture abroad. In particular, it discusses the CNPC's activities in Sudan and the strategic difficulties caused by the state's “going out” policy. It also explains how Chinese authorities sought to re-establish control over the international activities of its commercial actors in the extractive resources sector through balance of relative resources and unity of the state.

This chapter examines an enduring promotional construct of oil-based existence—“entrepreneurial life”—that propelled the neoliberal refashioning of American social life, institutional politics, and urban settlement during the last several decades of the twentieth century. Using a Gramscian-Foucauldian approach, the chapter first articulates three interventions to the debates over “neoliberalism.” It then outlines the basics of the refining process and suggests that the very nature of the process itself ensures multiple petroleum products. It also considers a specific cultural object produced by the petroleum industry that actively constructs an imaginary of petroleum-dependent life: an “educational” film titled Fuel-Less (a parody of the hit 1995 film Clueless), prepared by the American Petroleum Institute for sixth- to eighth-graders. The chapter concludes by discarding the neoliberal politics of ecology (or nature) in favor of a framework that takes into account the ecology of neoliberal politics.

This chapter examines the relationship between urban sprawl, fossil fuel combustion, and climate change, through the lens of a neo-Marxist political economy. It begins by explaining that Marx’s concept of exchange value results in the idea that raw materials have zero exchange value within capitalism. It then uses the U.S. petroleum industry to demonstrate the validity of Marx’s economic conception of natural resources. The chapter also discusses the contribution of urban sprawl to the consumer-durables revolution in the United States.

This chapter describes the battles in Congress over recent efforts to pass legislation preempting state common law claims with respect to federally regulated products and activities. It highlights two successful efforts to enact laws shielding manufacturers of firearms and certain vaccines from liability and an unsuccessful effort by the petroleum industry to shield itself from liability for damages caused by a fuel additive that leaked out of underground storage tanks into groundwater. The chapter then examines an ambitious attempt by victims of HMO and insurance company negligence to persuade Congress to fix an unanticipated and highly inequitable preemption situation by enacting a Patients' Bill of Rights. Although Congress devoted scant attention to federal preemption of common law claims in the 1960s and 1970s, the congressional front of the preemption war at the turn of the century was both heavily contested and highly visible.

This chapter is about sharing the benefits that accrue from the activities of petroleum and other extractive industries, against the backdrop of Nigeria’s experience with the management of wealth derived from petroleum. It analyses the different meanings of ‘resource control’, and the various methods of benefit distribution referred to as ‘benefit sharing’, by drawing upon examples from other countries. Within the context of this discourse, it deals with existing and proposed modes of benefit distribution, such as fiscal federalism, the constitutional derivation formula, and the proposed percentage set aside for communities under various drafts of the Petroleum Industry Bill. It also highlights unresolved issues surrounding the treatment of minorities in Nigeria.