As the cost of oil tops a hundred and twenty dollars a barrel, the drive to develop biofuel sparks a world food crisis, and the Iraq war continues with no end in sight, Americans' daily lives are increasingly affected by the geopolitics of oil. To put it in context, to understand how oil--especially Middle East oil--has become such a pressing issue for the economy and for national security, it helps to look back to the 1950s when an elite club of Western oil executives managed the seven largest petroleum companies--and controlled access to the international oil world. 

In Queen of the Oil Club: The Intrepid Wanda Jablonksi and the Power of Information, investigative reporter and historian Anna Rubino tells the story of how a path-breaking journalist, Wanda Jablonski, contributed to the breakdown of Big Oil by lifting the veil of secrecy over its business, exposing its vulnerabilities, and drawing attention to its chief opponents, the founders of OPEC.  Through exclusive access to Jablonski's private papers, interviews with more than a hundred people who knew her, including former oil executives and oil ministers, and her own experience working for Jablonksi's Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, Rubino has written the first-ever biography of this fearless and pioneering woman known to the oil world simply as "Wanda."

"[Wanda's] life and work have much to teach us about her era, oil and politics, and her own craft--and about independence and courage," writes Pulitzer Prize winning writer, Daniel Yergin in the book's foreword.  "For here is a woman who, without riches or family connections, used her ingenuity, her perseverance, and her high standards as a journalist to challenge the status quo and to get people to see the world in new ways."

In a career that spanned the four decades of the cold war and the emergence of the Middle East as a critical geopolitical region for the United States, Wanda would come to wield considerable clout. Rubino traces how she used information--highly prized intelligence in an industry that thrived on secrecy--to influence key players on both sides of the titanic struggle between oil-producing and consuming countries that led, in the 1970s, to a massive global economic upheaval. Indeed, by giving the emerging oil nationalists coverage and credibility--and introducing the two main founders to each other, over Coke or bourbon, depending on who was listening to her story--she earned the title, "OPEC's midwife." 

Born in western Slovakia in 1920, Wanda was an only-child who moved frequently, following her oil geologist father around the world.  She knew the world of derricks and drilling, but, writes Rubino, learned the ins and outs of the oil market, as well as the knack for coaxing information out of people, on her own. Rubino follows Wanda's career, from her rapid rise from "copyboy" to invaluable investigative reporter at the New York Journal of Commerce to her influential position as an international editor at Petroleum Week, and her years as founder and publisher of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, which became known as the "bible" of the oil industry and, during the economic crisis of the 1970s, made Wanda a multimillionaire.

At a time when women reporters were relegated to the lifestyle pages, observes Rubino, Wanda traveled the globe, including countless trips to the four leading oil producing countries--Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq.  Relentlessly cultivating sources, she conducted interviews in male-only board rooms and at exclusive parties, in hotel lobbies and fancy restaurants, at jungle drilling camps, refineries, and offshore platforms, in Bedouin tents and in King Saud's harem. Her readers--oil executives, bankers, and government officials--came to rely on her on-the-ground reporting, which brilliantly synthesized the outlooks of key figures in the oil producing countries.

Tracing Wanda's reporting trips in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Rubino reveals how she came to understand and document the growing nationalist movements in the Middle East and South America. "She began to look at the world through the eyes of those whose countries had the petroleum but not the power, who benefited far less from their oil than the industrialized West did," she writes.  "These countries had little say over what was done with their natural resource, including how much was produced and where it was sold."  Wanda, for example, had long standing relationships with both of OPEC's founders, Venezuela's Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso and Saudi Arabia's Abdullah Tariki, before they knew each other.  Though the Western business press often demeaned their efforts, explains Rubino, Wanda's substantive coverage gave them credibility, forcing the oil companies to pay attention to their arguments.

Queen of the Oil Club celebrates how one woman broke through three exceptionally powerful male-dominated worlds: the international oil industry, the Middle East, and business journalism. Wanda showed that information is power, that women can excel at getting and analyzing insider information, and that the ability to see the world from another culture's perspective is critical.  "By defying conventions in a notoriously male-dominated time and place, by questioning and probing and refining her own perspective, she helped change parameters that had seemed fixed," reflects Rubino.  "Using only her wit and her words, Wanda got people thinking in new ways. That alone was enough to get me to tell her story."

--Beacon Press Release, May 2008