Illustration by Kaela Chambers Antarctica is home to more than emperor penguins and a few dozen humans with science citizenship barricaded in small hermetic bases. It is also host to an estimated 200 billion barrels of hydrocarbons, alongside large quantities of gold, silver, uranium, and many other rare metals underneath a pristine ice cap still virgin of commercial exploitation. Securing a territory with such a rich underground, in whole or i...
...at present. Under this framework, the revenues from oil and natural gas production would fund massive infrastructure and military investments and, in return, these investments would continue to strengthen Russia’s hold on the hydrocarbons. In other words, the stronger the military, the more secure the oil and gas revenues – to the tune of dozens of trillions of dollars. Similar to Antarctica, which is home to 200 billion barrels of oil and 100 tr...
...se human rights in order to further enrich their shareholders. But why, then, has Chevron managed to get away with just that for so long? The answer has to do with the unique features of the oil industry and of oil (and other hydrocarbons) as products. Oil is a resource of nearly unparalleled economic and political value. States around the world desperately compete for access to oil reserves in those countries that have them, and a secure oil sup...
...ves that the Morales administration fears unleashing a genuinely transformative process. The two cardinal sins of the Morales administration are the rejection of the social movement demand for the nationalization of Bolivia’s hydrocarbons, and the lack of a national dialogue on the redistribution of resources. “Where in the new constitution does it touch the interests of the rich?” Olivera demanded. “Where are the proposals for worker co-governme...
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