Empires of Oil

Duncan Clarke was founder and Chairman of the Board, Global Pacific & Partners, a worldwide private advisory firm with vintage of around 40 years, the story told in Three Decades in the Long Grass, 2014. Born in Salisbury, 1948, and raised in Rhodesia, he gained the PhD (Economics) at University of St Andrews, 1975. He has published extensively on Africa and been advisor to governments and companies worldwide, and focused on geo-economics, Africa and world oil, historiography, and corporate strategy for the global upstream industry. The most recent books, published by Royal Sable Publishing, founded by the author in 2019, have been The Quiet Rhodesian: Silent Servant, 1909-1981, published in 2023, and Accidental Author: Fifty Years Writing, Africa and the World, in 2023, The Last Rhodesians: Society Adrift, in 2022, and Rhodes' Ghost: The Conquest of Zambesia, in 2020. Another book, Cecil Rhodes' Library, will be released in early 2024, and Zambesia: The Literary Safari, in late 2024. Details on fifty years-plus of writing, travel and related endeavours are found on duncan-clarke.com.

...a triumph and will be read by many beyond the energy sector. Erudite, convincing and grounded in Clarke's experience of life in the oil-producing countries on the fringes of Western influence, Empires of Oil will command a place on the shelf devoted to other classics of international energy politics. The Petroleum Economist If you read just one book on oil this year, let it be by Duncan Clarke, whose Empires of Oil is a stimulating mix of futurology, philosophy, and real politik, with a dose of lateral thinking thrown in. Drawing on sources as diverse as Machiavelli and Gibbon, Niall Ferguson and Robert D Kaplan, as well as lessons learnt from three decades as a leading industry advisor, Clarke challenges current assumptions about the future of oil. The result is a blast of fresh intellectual air that forces a radical reappraisal of the role of the commodity that shapes our lives, for better or for worse. -- Michael Holman, Former Africa editor Financial Times A timely contribution to debate on corporate oil as the world fast-forwards into an uncertain energy future. With characteristic iconoclasm, Clarke critically evaluates urgent challenges presented by geopolitical transformations, explaining why smart companies must change strategies, portfolio choice and tactics to survive. The old order based on large players exercising unbridled power around the globe is under siege from smaller, more nimble competitors while state oil companies worldwide are redefining the rules of the global oil game, with resource nationalists and ethnic militia redrawing the oil map to restrict entry and reserve access for traditional players. -- Barry Morgan The International Oil & Gas Newspaper