Don't look now, but five nationally owned oil companies (NOCs) control more than half the world's reserves of oil and natural gas. In today's media-steeped culture you might expect those companies to be under a constant microscope, but actually their operations tend to be cloaked in bureaucratic smoke. Valerie Marcel's book sheds valuable light on the way these companies operate and the red-tape constraints they face. While the book suffers from a rather colorless presentation, it more than compensates for this with insights into what the NOCs are and how they relate to the world's insatiable thirst for petroleum. We recommend this book to serious students of the global energy business.