Book Review: Space, Oil and Capital

Abstract

Space, Oil and Capital contributes to the current and vibrant debate on energy resource scarcity and contestation. Conventional geopolitics and political economy focus on oil supply security, whose quantity and location are viewed in geologically deterministic terms (e.g., Klare 2001, 2004). A focus on geological limits makes competition for oil a competition for the control of the spaces in which it is located, or through which it is transported to consumers. Mazen Labban deviates from such arguments and proposes that it is not oil geology that produces geopolitical contestations, but the production of space in the process of competition that is crucial to producing the finiteness of oil. Drawing primarily from Marx, Luxemburg, Lefebvre and Harvey, Labban demonstrates that competition for oil is geared at ensuring that part of it stays out of the market in order to make its production profitable. Competition over oil, despite generally held beliefs, is not geared at ensuring supply, but at regulating supply and ensuring profit.