Oil is a $2 trillion international industry. Most oil is extracted from underneath undeveloped nations by companies from developed nations, who rely on the invisible hands of middlemen to get deals done:
As Dick Cheney put it when he was CEO of Halliburton, “The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States.” Sometimes, a company will reach out to rulers of oil-rich states on its own, negotiating and striking deals with them through official emissaries. More often, though, a company will instead work through men like Calil and Eronat: independent fixers, whose job it is to know the leaders and other government officials for whom oil serves as both piggybank and “political weapon.” A fixer can open doors for his corporate clients, arranging introductions to the various potentates he knows. He can help companies navigate the local bureaucracy, or provide the lay of the land with political and economic intelligence, or point to important people or companies that should be courted or hired in order to curry favor. And, in some cases, the fixer can feed money to those in power, in payoffs that often would be illegal under the stringent American and European anti-bribery laws. Edward Chow, a former Chevron executive who spent more than three decades in the oil business, described to me the logic by which fixers thrive. With the U.S. anti-corruption laws, he explained, “There is no gray zone. The lines are drawn very strictly. On the other hand, executives of oil companies are sent overseas to make deals, and they are measured by performance: you either make the deal or you don’t. So you’re supposed to be clean but you’re also supposed to create business. That leads to a tension, and a temptation to use middlemen. Let him do whatever he needs to do; I’m not part of it and don’t want to know.”