the oil complex. First, the geo-strategic interest in oil
means that military and other forces are part of the local oil complex. Second,
local and global civil society enters into the oil complex either through
transnational advocacy groups concerned with human rights and the transparency
of the entire oil sector, or through local social movements and NGOs fighting
over the consequences of the oil industry and the accountability of the
petro-state. Third, the transnational oil business—the majors, the
independents, and the vast service industry—are actively involved in the
process of local development through community development, corporate social
responsibility and stakeholder inclusion. Fourth, the inevitable struggle over
oil wealth—who controls and owns it, who has rights over it, and how the
wealth is to be deployed and used—inserts a panoply of local political
forces (ethnic militias, paramilitaries, separatist movements, and so on) into
the operations of the oil complex (the conditions in Colombia are an exemplary
case). In some circumstances oil operations are the object of civil wars.
Fifth, multilateral development agencies (the IMF and the IBRD) and financial
corporations like the export credit agencies appear as key “brokers”
in the construction and expansion of the energy sectors in oil-producing states
(and latterly the multilaterals are pressured to become the enforcers of
transparency among governments and oil companies). And not least, there is the
relationship between oil and the shady world of drugs, illicit wealth (oil
theft for example), mercenaries, and the black economy.