Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak

by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

Book Overview

"This book explains both why the decline of our most precious fuel is inevitable and how challenging it will be to cope with what comes next."--Richard E. Smalley, University Professor, Rice University, and 1996 Nobel laureate

With world oil production about to peak and inexorably head toward steep decline, what fuels are available to meet rising global energy demands? That question, once thought to address a fairly remote contingency,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080902957X
• ISBN13: 9780809029570
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 2.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Best Book of the Year!

Deffeyes is Professor Emeritus at Princeton and has decades of experience with Shell Oil. The book is timely, informative, and humerous - what more could you ask for? His key point is that Hubbert's (famous U.S. geologist) 1969 prediction that world oil production would peak in 2000 is close and should be taken much more seriously - Deffeyes himself predicts 2005. Deffeyes also bolsters Hubbert's credibility by pointing out that his 1956 prediction that U.S. production would peak in the early 70's proved accurate. Deffeyes then poses a thought-provoking series of supportive questions: 1)Why have no new refineries been built in the U.S. since 1976? 2)Why is the number of oil tankers declining? 3)Why is there little new oil drilling? 4)Why is '03 production only 3% greater than that of '98? (0.6% growth/year) Yes, there are others predicting that the peak will not come until as late as 2036 - obviously Deffeyes (and others) disagrees. The REAL cause of the Soviet Union's collapse was not increased American defense spending, but increased Saudi oil production, according to Deffeyes. The Soviets exported 2 million barrels a day until '85, and produced at a rate 3 times that of the Saudis. Then the Saudi's increased production and drove prices down to a level less than the Soviet's cost of production and transportation. After 6 years of no hard cash, the Soviet economy collapsed. Deffeyes then points out a number of facts that undermine thoughts of easy escapes from "Hubbert's Peak." 1)About half the oil in a field cannot be recovered. Experts have been trying for many years, and spending over $1 billion/year in research. Meanwhile, the major producers are selling off their partially depleted fields. 2)Ethanol production consumes more energy than it creates. 3)Neither hydrogen, fuel cells, oil shale, nor tar sands offer realistic hope of relief in the short-term (5 years) relief. 4)2019 oil production will be 90% of that in 2005. 5)Global per capita of oil peaked in 1979. 6)ANWR would postpone world production decline by only 2-3 months. 7)The world-wide supply of natural gas is unclear - however, prices have already risen rapidly already in recent years. Suggested Near-Term Solutions: Deffeyes begins by pointing out that 75% of oil is used for transportation. Thus, we should be pursuing much more efficient European diesel auto technology - up to 90 mpg. Less than 5% of electricity is generated from oil - that can be replaced with more nuclear energy and wind power; coal is another alternative, but it also creates global warming and pollution. Bottom-Line: The end of relatively cheap oil is near - what are we going to do about it?

Deffeyes's Reprise

I have just finished reading Kenneth Deffeyes's new book "Beyond oil: The view from Hubbert's Peak" (2005) .I almost didn't buy this book. I assumed it would not add much to what I had learned from Deffeyes's earlier book on the same subject, "Hubbert's Peak: The impending world oil shortage". What a mistake that would have been!"Hubbert's Peak" remains an extremely valuable book for those who want to understand *why* Hubbert's hypothesis may be correct, but "Beyond Oil" is much better at explaining the hypothesis and showing us that the data supports it overwhelmingly. The great new value in "Beyond Oil" is to be found in Chapter 3, The Hubbert Method.In "Hubbert's Peak", Deffeyes presented only qualitative and graphical descriptions of Hubbert's theory in the main text. He describes what the theory means and why it was important. Reader's may believe him because the rest of the book makes his credentials unmistakable: Professor Emeritus of Geology at Princeton, obvious encyclopedic knowledge of petroleum geology, 50 years in the oil business or consulting to it, friendship and collegial association with Hubbert himself. But his editor did not let him put any equations in the main text. When he does get to the equations in the notes at the back, their presentation is too concise, they require too much math knowledge for most readers, and lack the associated explanation that would make their relationship to the theory easy to understand, even for many readers who have the necessary math knowledge. It's all there, but you have to be committed and sophisticated to dig it out.In this new presentation, Deffeyes has performed a brilliant act of creation in constructing a quantitative explanation of Hubbert's theory that can be completely understood by anyone who can read graphs and do elementary high school algebra. (The success of Hubbert's Peak must have persuaded his editors to let him put a few equations in the text of this book.) Instead of understanding merely the results of Hubbert's theory, and accepting them on Deffeyes's authority, you can understand, completely, the sequence of thought that leads from data to theory and back to data to check the support for the theory. The effect is compelling. Hubbert did not seem to understand his own theory this clearly until a decade of so after his early publications in the 1950s, and he never explained it simply. His early arguments depended on educated guesses about the total volume of oil that could eventually be recovered from the oil provinces in question. To this day, his detractors criticize the theory incorrectly on the assumption that it depends on a separate and independent estimate of the size of the ultimately recoverable resource in order to predict the date of the peak of production. Hubbert removed this dependence, but his papers are apparently so hard to read that those who are looking for a way to refute the theory miss the improvement. The revised theory *generates* a

"The fat lady is singing" (p. 49)

"Hubbert's Peak" is at the top of the bell-shaped curve of world oil production, just at the spot where production starts to decline. Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes sets a likely date: Thanksgiving Day, 2005. I have read other sources and they agree that half the oil in the ground will be out of the ground by a similar date or not later than about 2010. True, there are others who give it another decade or so, but they are in the minority. At any rate, Deffeyes has his old mentor's curve to support his view. M. King Hubbert was the guy who predicted with startling accuracy when US oil production would peak (early 1970s). Deffeyes uses the same methodology to predict the peak for world oil production. The bugaboo here of course is that world oil demand will not decrease, but with the rapid industrialization of places like China and India, it will increase, perhaps dramatically. The result? Higher oil prices, of course. In fact, Deffeyes's book, written last year, effectively predicted the current spike in oil prices! Clearly he is a man to listen to. But the salient point is in his title: "Beyond Oil." Metaphorically, he sees us gazing down from Hubbert's peak (which is exactly where we are) looking back and looking forward and asking, just what will the world be like "beyond oil"? Ah, yes, like the baby suckling the bottle, we will soon or late, abruptly or with planned gradualness (but always with some kind of real discomfort), have to give up our dependence on cheap oil and switch to something else. What Deffeyes does so very well in this intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable book is first give us the background on oil, where it came from, and explain in detail why it's clear that production is about to decline. It is interesting to note that the Hubbert/Deffeyes method allows us to chart how much oil is left simply by gauging past and current production. I was surprised at this, because who is to say how much is left in the ground; but Deffeyes's point is that oil exploration and production has been so extensive world-wide that just by reading the production we can realize what is left. In other words, if the oil were there, it would have been discovered and drilled for. This is not to say that there are not some (small) fields left undiscovered. There are a few, no doubt, but like puddles added to a great lake, they won't affect the overall picture. Then he explores the extent to which we can switch to natural gas and/or coal to create electricity and to run our transportation systems. The US has some of the largest coal reserves in the world along with China and Russia. But the problem with coal is pollution and toxins and the cost of filtering them out at the smokestack. China right now uses coal for almost everything, including cooking family meals, and the clouds, reminiscent of those that choked London during the Industrial Revolution, are gathering thickly over Chinese cities. But Deffeyes notes, "...we likely will be

Finally Some Decent Info About Oil Shale And Tar Sands

In this follow up to his previous book on Hubbert's Peak/Peak Oil, Deffeyes gives us some engrossing info on such subjects as the Alberta tar sands, the Green River oil shale and nuclear power. Out of all the peak oil books I've read so far, this one is the only one that gives a very concise and knowledgable summary on these and other "alternatives" to cheap oil. Most other peak oil writers aren't old school geologists with hydrocarbon strings pumping in their veins instead of blood, so you don't get the feeling they really know what they are talking about. Several books I've read casually dismiss the Alberta tar sands and the Green River oil shale and shouldn't. Deffeyes doesn't. I'm actually a bit more hopeful and optimistic about the world's energy future after reading this book. (Not by much, though.)

Good facts, scary future.

Deffeyes flushes out many of the themes raised in his earlier book, Hubbert's Peak, and gives us a bleak view of the future. No or only very expensive petro products and no good alternative. Deffeyes is a well credentialed scholar and oil industry geologist. While many of the details are more than I wanted to know about natural gas, oil shale, nuclear power, etc., the information is fascinating and seems to be very credible. The lack of a good short term replacement for petroleum is frightening: Deffeyes does not provide any sort of solution beyond "move closer to work" or "learn to grow and enjoy local vegetables and give up your dependence on imported goods." At least Deffeyes spares us the usual pep talk: the American people can get their elected officials to support [fill in the blank.] In fact, Deffeyes suggests that we have missed the time in which to find an oil substitute that can be implemented. Deffeyes is witty, writes well and certainly appears to know his subject, something we would all be better for understanding.