This is an outstanding publication. At a time when many companies consider Africa's Gulf of Guinea to be the new frontier of oil (and gas) exploitation, with energy security imposing itself as a key issue in global politics, the book provides important insights on the political economy of oil in Africa. It is the first comparative study of Africa's most important oil states, and thus includes Angola, Nigeria, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon as well as the new oil producers of Chad, São Tomé & Principe and Equatorial Guinea. The analytical centre of the book is a political and economic triangle that encompasses oil companies, oil-producing host states and oil-importing countries. The book has several merits: it is historically informed and takes structures seriously without falling prey to structural determinism. At the same time, it takes a hard look at the actors involved (companies, governments) and the strategies they pursue. The result is a fascinating relationship which locks companies, the petroleum elites of host states and oil-importing countries into a mutually rewarding partnership that belies the surprisingly durable notion that Africa's oil-producing states are enmeshed in relations of dependency with the outside world. While all of this is presented in an admirably sober fashion, the author does not conceal the disconcerting consequences which this relationship has on the large majority of citizens in the region. But this is precisely what the book is about, inasmuch as it examines the seeming paradox that the oil states in the Gulf of Guinea continue to survive, despite the fact that they may be considered to be continuously failing entities on account of their unwillingness and inability to provide basic public services to their citizens.

That oil wealth amounts to a ‘curse’ in many developing countries is now widely accepted. Soares de Oliveira goes far beyond this wisdom to probe the structures and interests that make ‘state failure’ not an aberration but a permanent political condition. He convincingly shows why and how the ill-reputed and difficult surroundings that prevail in the Gulf of Guinea do not deter the large-scale and historically unprecedented investments in the region that keep oil exploration and, indeed, the states going. A large part of the answer is the centrality of the state in the oil business. Given the capital-intensive and long-term nature of investments and the need to secure it, ‘oil companies are absolutely dependent on the existence of a sovereign entity with which they sign contracts and strike partnerships’ (p. 53). Underpinned by international commercial law, oil companies and the governments of oil-importing countries do everything to reproduce the sovereignty of the oil states. This congruence of interests explains why the relations between the governments of host states and oil companies have always been good, despite political uncertainties. Particularly interesting in this regard are the chapters and sections on foreign oil companies, the parastatal (national) oil companies, and the case studies on new oil states such as Chad, Equatorial-Guinea and São Tomé & Principe. The picture emerging on the domestic side of the oil states is one of ‘successfully failed states’, in which petroleum elites secure economic rents necessary for the survival of corrupt and mismanaged states. More often than not, these properties do not reflect weakness, but are the product of a distinct political logic that purposefully perpetuates ‘failure’. The result is the archipelago state (Thomas Callaghy), an entity which matches the enclave nature of the oil sector. As in colonial times, territories are divided into useful and not so useful spaces. Oil-producing enclaves are protected by various state and non-state security outfits, while the bulk of the population has to fend for itself, relying on public services that the savvy state elites have discharged to local and international NGOs.

In the last part of this excellent book, Soares de Oliveira analyses the prospects of structural change. All things being equal, he concludes that there is currently little evidence to suggest that the political economy of oil and its devastating consequences will any time soon take a turn for the better. This is so despite the recent emergence of activist international communities which seek to advance ‘progressive agendas’ (p. 274) such as transparency, human rights and minimum political, social and environmental standards. Although these agendas have become very powerful in international discourse, the author argues that they may have been oversold in the face of powerful considerations of realpolitik that value oil more than anything else. Soares de Oliveira cites a European diplomat based in Angola whose comment on domestic and international oil interests on the one hand and public goods on the other probably reveals the dominant thinking and indeed the prevailing political reality: ‘The trains may not run on time … but the army and Sonangol [Angola's national oil company] work and that's all that matters!’ (p. 63).