1980 Balai primer on the oil industry

I’ve been scrounging around in the past year or so, online and among my files, for comprehensive (but preferably “laymanized”) primers and research studies on the global oil industry. Such a primer, perhaps repurposed and/or updated, could be widely disseminated as discussion material for all kinds of grassroots organizations, which are constantly seeking ways to understand and confront the economic crisis that confronts them daily.

So far. the only material that fit my requirements is this: An industrial-strength 24-page issue of the BALAI Quarterly Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1, which I found among my physical archives. Although in English, it’s perfect material for mass education. Only, there’s one minor problem: it was published in December 1980—nearly 45 years ago.

Ergo, this paper was before the Soviet collapse, the Iraq war, the changing tides for OPEC vis-a-vis the Seven Sisters, the full impacts of neoliberal globalization and WTO, before the changes in the imperialist economies post-2008 financial meltdown, the rise of BRICS and the BRI, so-called peak oil, alternative energy sources, and so on.

I employed my best Google-search techniques, but couldn’t find anything recent and comprehensive. There are indeed a big number of statements and news stories about specific issues such as on proposed increases in fares and power rates, the transport crisis, jeepney modernization, specific impacts on food prices, and so on. But they don’t have the explanatory firepower I’m looking for: who controls global oil, who benefits from the higher prices, and how can peoples and nations fight back?

Maybe there are such primers published by IBON or by KMU-KMP, or maybe Gabriela ca. 1990s or 2000s. But my hardcopy archive storage bins aren’t that quick and easy to access. Or maybe I haven’t searched or asked around enough. Maybe the said materials are offline in some office library or vertical files somewhere. In any case, I’ve scanned and saved this Balai journal issue in PDF format, and it’s now available for reading and download on this site. (Click the link and icon at the end of this post.)

Hopefully, this ancient primer and any more added materials could become the basis for collective updating and sharing. The people need to know that there is a way to confront US-led Western imperialism and its domestic ilk on the issue of global oil prices and the oil industry. #