Fuel for corruption, conflict, addiction

In “Crude World,’’ Maas, who has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times, examines the nexus of politics and commerce at the dark, nasty heart of oil. In chapters starkly titled “Plunder,’’ “Rot,’’ “Contamination,’’ “Fear,’’ and “Mirage,’’ he tracks oil to fields in Africa, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and West Texas, illustrating how deeply it corrupts.

“A core feature of the resource curse . . . is that although the oil industry dominates an economy, it creates few jobs,’’ Maass writes in “Mirage,’’ his chapter on the power Chávez has amassed through manipulation of oil from Venezuela. “Refineries can cost billions of dollars to construct, but once they’re up and running, perhaps a few hundred workers are needed to monitor [these high-tech facilities].’’

Maass doesn’t like or trust oil companies, even when they suggest familiarity with social conscience. He vividly reports on the gap between the “rot’’ the oil companies trigger in societies they exploit and the image they aim to present. Nowhere is the contrast starker than in the Nigerian villages of Oru Sangama (a slum illuminated by toxic flares of natural gas) and its sister village, Elem Sangama. Shell built the latter, equipping it with a health clinic and a generator, but there’s no medical equipment or doctor, and no gas - just like in Oru Sangama. Shell, Maass suggests, is playing a game in the name of responsibility. If it weren’t for the oil they siphon off Shell lines, Oru Sangama’s residents would be even poorer. It’s a political compact, based on turning a blind eye, that maintains oil’s sway. “Shell presents itself as a saddened bystander to social collapse,’’ Maass writes.