The opening question of an Ask Me Anything that Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan moderated with journalist Ken Silverstein, author of The Secret World of Oil:

“Question:

Is the oil industry actually more corrupt than other major global industries? If so, why?

Ken Silverstein:

Yes, it actually is. The only industry that’s remotely as corrupt is weapons and partly for the same reason. If you’re selling widgets or paper towels or T-shirts, you make a relatively small amount of money on a lot of contracts. When you’re in the oil (or weapons) business, the stakes are a lot higher on individual deals. You may be chasing an energy concession worth tens of billions of dollars that could be generating revenue, and profits, for decades. That encourages you to use any tactic that will reel in that deal, and that often means paying off government officials. Keith Myers, a London-based consultant and former BP executive, told me, ‘Corruption isn’t endemic in the energy business because people in the industry are more corrupt or have lower morals but because you’re dealing with huge sums of capital. A million dollars here or there doesn’t make any difference to the overall economics of a project, but it can make a huge difference to the economics of a few individuals who can delay or stop or approve the project.’

A related reason is that a lot of the energy resources that we want to run our factories and heat our homes and fill our gas tanks is sitting in Third World countries headed by corrupt governments. Or as our illustrious former vice president and Halliburton exec, Dick Cheney, once put it, ‘The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes.'”