The Brutal Vernacular of the Oilfield

November 3, 2018 1:09 PM

The LRB continues their very occasional but always interesting series of stories of oil industry corruption from a company lawyer.

The first story, Oil Industry Corruption, 19 January 2017, by Alexander Briant:

‘What will happen if they find out?’ I ask. She doesn’t speak but mimes putting a gun to her head and firing. She is not worrying unnecessarily. A rash of bullet holes in the wall of our base bears witness to the shooting of a manager who tried to break an organised crime ring a few years ago.

The latest, A Kazakh Scam, 8 November 2018, by Robert Drury:

Pavel looked every inch the ex-secret policeman – crew cut, black leather jacket – and when I ask him about his suspension he does not admit the problem. On the contrary, the fact that he has been sanctioned for having too high a clean-up rate irks him. He is sulky and truculent, but one thing leads to another and soon we are discussing the Great Patriotic War. Using the map, Pavel gives me his view on where Operation Barbarossa went wrong and segues neatly from the strategic to the tactical, providing a detailed account of the Battle of Kursk. When our meeting ends, Pavel, slightly mollified but completely unrepentant, wishes me luck.

Coincidentally, both Alexander Briant and Robert Drury were English Catholic martyrs, later beatified.

posted by chappell, ambrose (8 comments total)

I should note that I’m a huge sucker for “left-leaning literary magazine explores the world of friendly capitalist” as a genre, and I enjoyed these articles as much as Keith Gessen’s interviews in N+1 with Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager back in the day.

(Also, despite having just posted this, I’m now worrying that the author(s)’s gifts for understated wit and evocative scenes doesn’t really come through from my choice of extracts, which may not be representative of the actual flavour of each piece. Whoever is responsible for these can really write.)
posted by chappell, ambrose at 1:27 PM on November 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

These were both well written and interesting, describing corruption in places that are sordid and mundane and sad. Are there more than these two?
posted by gryftir at 3:42 PM on November 3, 2018

gryftir: so far just these two, as far as I’m aware - although I’m not a full subscriber to the LRB, and the author’s insistence on changing pseudonyms makes it harder to be certain that I’ve spotted them all. I would imagine that a lot of people have these stories to tell, especially in the big money industries that operate multinationally. There’s always a lot going on far away where the sausage gets made, where success depends in large measure on being seen to conform to the values of headquarters, while being practical about the reality on the ground, pushing things forward for the most part by force of personality and an appetite for risk. From my life, I’m reminded of charismatic and sometimes frightening people I’ve met working in “emerging economies” within the pharmaceutical industry, or in mining, or oil, or heavy industry. I know someone who’s an executive at a household name who drunkenly admitted to me that he got his first big break by having his superior’s legs broken, other acquaintances who have breezily lied their way through interviews and someone else who switched from smuggling kgs of hashish to defence / aerospace and then a stellar career in luxury goods in China. There really are far fewer rules in many places where these large companies operate, and that tends to select for smart, driven people who can look good in a suit and say the right things on conference calls but aren’t necessarily slavish about the ol’ moral compass. My experience in those contexts (in Africa, East Asia and Latin America) is from the international development, muesli-eating, sandal-wearing, kumbaya side of things, but these pieces rang really true to me.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 5:15 PM on November 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

Very well written, thanks for posting!
posted by carter at 4:23 AM on November 4, 2018

Another martyr: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n24/william-carter/diary
posted by carter at 4:45 AM on November 4, 2018 [2 favorites]

And possibly: Christopher Thompson?
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n01/christopher-thompson/diary

It's another oil industry piece, with a single contribution from a pseudonymous writer with no account details.
posted by carter at 4:54 AM on November 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

carter: Great spots! I’d actually read the William Carter piece amd now feel very stupid. You’re quite right that it’s obviously very similar to the other two (oil company lawyer, English Catholic martyr) and written in the time between them. I don’t know how I forgot about it...

I’d never seen the Christopher Thompson piece before - it comes 10 years before the others, but it does deal suggestively with similar themes. It’s interesting to speculate!

No interest in unmasking the person or persona behind these, but I do hope that they continue writing (even once they run out of horrifying stories from their day job).
posted by chappell, ambrose at 6:21 AM on November 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

So the guy who wasn't involved and had already left (Aleksei), but was still fired: was he political, then (or mobster) ? Or is his fate more in the Kafkaesque of the situation ?
posted by k5.user at 12:37 PM on November 5, 2018