Books
Campbell, C. J. The Coming Oil Crisis. 1997, 210 pages (oversized book)
----- Oil Crisis. Sept 2005, 456 pages, Multi-Science Publishing
Deffeyes, Kenneth S. Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak. 2005
----- Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage. 2001
Goodstein, David. Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil. 2004
Heinberg, Richard. The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies. 2002
----- Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World. 2004
Kunstler, James Howard. The Long Emergency. 2005
Cooke, Ronald. Oil, Jihad, and Destiny. 2005
Klare, Michael. Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Petroleum Dependence. 2004
----- Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Landscape. 2002
Leeb, Stephen and Donna. The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself and Profit from the Coming Energy Crisis. 2004
McKillop, Andrew. Final Energy Crisis. 2004
McQuaig, Linda. It’s the Crude, Dude. 2004
Roberts, Paul, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. 2004
Ruppert, Michael. Crossing the Rubicon: September 11 and the Decline of American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. 2004
Shah, Sonia. Crude: The Story of Oil. 2004
Darley, Julian. High Noon for Natural Gas. 2004
Huber, Peter and Mark Mills. The Bottomless Well: The Twlight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy. 2005
Simmons, Matthew R. Twlight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. 2005
Yeomans, Matthew. Oil: Anatomy of an Industry. 2004
Clark, William R. Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq, and the Future of the Dollar. 2005
Gold, Thomas. The Origin of Methane (and Oil) in the Crust of the Earth. 1993.
(Gold argues that oil is not a fossil fuel. For rebuttals, see Jean Laherrere, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, and Ugo Bardi below.)
Web Sites
www.peakoil.net
www.postcarbon.org
www.communitysolution.org
www.simmonsco-intl.com
www.fromthewilderness.com
Internet Essays
(The following two essays support the Thomas Gold hypothesis, that oil is not a fossil fuel derived from organic matter, but is an abiotic substance generated in the crust of the earth.)
Brown, Thomas J., The End of Fossel Fuels
http://www.borderlands.com/archives/arch/endfos.html
McGowan, Dave, Beware the ‘Peak Oil’ Agenda
http://educate-yourself.org/en/davemcgowan70newsletter12oct04.shtml
(For a rebuttal of the Gold hypothesis, see the following:)
Bardi, Ugo, Abiotic Oil: Science or Politics?
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100404_abiotic_oil.shtml
Laherrere, Jean, No Free Lunch, Part 1: A Critique of Thomas Gold’s Claims for Abiotic Oil
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/102104_no_free_pt1.shtml
Pfeiffer, Dale Allen, No Free Lunch, Part 2: If Abiotic Oil Exists, Where Is It?
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011205_no_free_pt2.shtml
(Other relevant essays, editorials, and news reports)
Caffentzis, George, Peak Oil and National Security: A Critique of Energy Alternatives
http://www.ww4report.com/node/1027
----- The Struggle for the Petroleum Commons: Local, Islamic, and Global
http://ww4report.com/105/planetwatch/petroleumcommons
Klare, Michael T., More Blood, Less Oil: The Failed U.S. Mission to Capture Iraqi Petroleum
www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_092005R.shtml
----- Oil Wars: Transforminhg the American military into a Global Oil-Protection Service
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1008-23.htm
---- Mapping the Oil Motive
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=7479§ionID=15
----- The Intensifying Global Struggle for Energy
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0509-21.htm
Pocha, Jehangir, The Axis of Oil
http://www.alternet.org/story/21150
Pitt, William Rivers, The Prophecy of Oil
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030705Z.shtml
Bryce, Robert, Running on Empty
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031505G.shtml
Gowans, Stephen, US-UK Interventionism. The Hidden Agenda is Oil: Sudan: Round Gazillion
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GOW407B.html
DeWit, Andrew, Peak Oil and Japan’s Food Dependence
http://hjapanfocus.org/article.asp?id=397
Cavalto, Alfred J., Oil: Caveat Empty
http://www.thebulletin.org/print.php?art_ofn=mj05cavallp
Crensen, Matt, Experts: Petroleum May Be Nearing Peak
http://commondreams.org/headlines05/0528-03.htm
Mieszkowski, Katharine, After the Oil is Gone
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/14/kunstler/index_np.html
Heinberg, Richard, Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply
http://www.museletter.com/archive/159.html
Pfeiffer, Dale Allen, Peak Oil and the Working Class
www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/090205Pfeiffer/090205pfeiffer.html
Lundberg, Jan, Termination of the Fossil-Fuels Society
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081605_world_stories.shtml
The foregoing list is supplied by James Herod (title link on this blog post). I especially recommend The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler; Twilight in the Desert:The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, by oil analyst Matthew Simmons; and anything by oil geologists Colin Campbell and Kenneth Deffeyes. Kunstler is very accessible, witty, and acerbic, and Simmons lays out a very detailed and chilling picture of the steep decline and eminent depletion of the world's largest, and one its few, "elephant" oil fields, on which we are dependent for a major portion of our oil supplies in this country.
Other favorite sources of mine are:
Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels, by M. King Hubbert, 1956. This is the famous 1956 report in which Shell Oil geologist M.King Hubbert correctly predicted the peaking of domestic oil production in 1970, and the peaking of global oil discoveries in 1964. He predicted the peaking of global production between year 2000 and 2010.Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management, by Robert Hirsch, SAIC, Project Leader. The famous Hirsch Report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy.
World Oil Magazine
Peak Oil Presentation in the U.S. Congress, April 27, 2005, by Roscoe Bartlett, Rep. MD
American Theocracy:The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips.This is a beautifully written book that explores the relationship between our dependence on oil, specifically foreign oil, conservative politics, and religion in this country, and the dire political implications of oil depletion and our promotion of a way of life very dependent upon copious and ever-increasing quantities of the substance in a context where it may no longer be available. An absolute must -read, and a great pleasure to read because of the elegant, cogent writing.
2 comments:
Global crude oil production peaked in 2008.
The media, governments, world leaders, and public should focus on this issue.
Global crude oil production had been rising briskly until 2004, then plateaued for four years. Because oil producers were extracting at maximum effort to profit from high oil prices, this plateau is a clear indication of Peak Oil.
Then in August and September of 2008 while oil prices were still very high, global crude oil production fell nearly one million barrels per day, clear evidence of Peak Oil (See Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of "Oil Watch Monthly," December 2008, page 1) http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/2008_december_oilwatch_monthly.pdf.
Peak Oil is now.
Credit for accurate Peak Oil predictions (within a few years) goes to the following (projected year for peak given in parentheses):
* Association for the Study of Peak Oil (2007)
* Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of “Oil Watch Monthly” (2008)
* Tony Eriksen, Oil stock analyst; Samuel Foucher, oil analyst; and Stuart Staniford, Physicist [Wikipedia Oil Megaprojects] (2008)
* Matthew Simmons, Energy investment banker, (2007)
* T. Boone Pickens, Oil and gas investor (2007)
* U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2005)
* Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Princeton professor and retired shell geologist (2005)
* Sam Sam Bakhtiari, Retired Iranian National Oil Company geologist (2005)
* Chris Skrebowski, Editor of “Petroleum Review” (2010)
* Sadad Al Husseini, former head of production and exploration, Saudi Aramco (2008)
* Energy Watch Group in Germany (2006)
* Fredrik Robelius, Oil analyst and author of "Giant Oil Fields" (2008 to 2018)
Oil production will now begin to decline terminally.
Within a year or two, it is likely that oil prices will skyrocket as supply falls below demand. OPEC cuts could exacerbate the gap between supply and demand and drive prices even higher.
Independent studies indicate that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. There is no plan nor capital for a so-called electric economy. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”
"By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame."
With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.
Documented here:
http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html (48 page Peak Oil Report)
http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
Dr. Wirth, thank you for this post; and thank you for underscoring the extreme difficulty of either replacing oil with alternatives, or keeping our gigantic systems running as it depletes.
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