‘The Oil Road’ opens the lid on the often-shady energy economy, weaving absorbing travel reportage into powerful investigative journalism…If you want to know why oil matters read this book. (Time Out – 5th September 2012)
Platform’s campaign to put the Oil Road on the map has been given a fine start with our new travel book being chosen by London’s main cultural listings magazine, Time Out, as ‘Book of the Week’. Our campaign Tour will take place at venues across England, Scotland and Wales this autumn and winter, examine how Britain and the EU’s drive to control oil reserves – and hence people and events – has shattered environments and shaped societies. The stupendous wealth of crude has long inspired dreams of a world remade – how do we change direction?
Our aim is to challenge the framing and presentation of militarised fossil fuel pathways as the innocuous ‘energy corridors’ of Europe. To reveal them as unidirectional ‘corridors’ that only permit the movement of certain commodities, not people. The tour will uncover the network of companies, financial institutions and government departments that create and maintain these Oil Roads, will render visible the hidden arteries of this continent and the ‘carbon web’ that lies behind them.
Next year we will continue through Italy, Austria and Germany – following the movement of Caspian crude over the Alps described in The Oil Road, in collaboration with our partners, re:common, Urgewald and Bankwatch.
We are starting to book venues – including bookshops, community centres and art spaces for this autumn – in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and elsewhere. Please get in touch if you’re interested by emailing [email protected].
Current Oil Road events include the book launch at Daunt Books on 20 September, a discussion with Paul Mason at the LRB bookshop on October 4th, and participation on panels at 6 Billion Ways on 25 September and the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair on 24th October.