Rating: 
Summary: Be Informed
Review: This book does an excellent job explaining how they find oil. In doing so, it also does a good job letting us know just how much is left.Some of the conclusions you'll find rather shocking.
Rating: 
Summary: Enough junk pseudo-science
Review: This book is one more of the genre of typical junk-science, geo-phrenology, delivered in the usual pompous manner of American tenured professors of geo-geo nonsense, complete with the irrelevant dropping of terms used in the real, hard sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry), combined with casual disregard for both scientific data and economic facts, flavored heavily with outright falsehoods. Maurice and Smithson have already described Deffeyes best:
"Every ten or fifteen years since the late 1800's, 'experts' have predicted that oil reserves would last only ten more years. These experts have predicted nine out of the last zero oil-reserve exhaustions." - C. Maurice and C. Smithson, Doomsday Mythology: 10,000 Years of Economic Crisis, Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 1984. To paraphrase the late Justice of the United States Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes, when writing the majority opinion in Buck vs Bell, "Five generations of imbecility are enough."
RIGHT !
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Summary: Hubbert and Deffeyes sheer speculation. Read why.
Review: This book is speculative based on a flawed forecasting. King Hubbert made a famous prediction in 1956 that U.S. oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. His forecasting methodology was to estimate the total U.S. oil supply that was and will ever be available for production. This quantity is known as the Ultimate. This Ultimate is equal to Cumulative Historical Production + Reserves + Undiscovered Potential. Mr. Hubbert?s next step was to fit the Ultimate as the surface under a normally distributed Bell Curve with the X-axis representing time (years date: 1956, 1957, 1958) and the Y-axis representing an estimate of annual production in any given year. The Peak is equal to the midpoint on this curve and represents the year at the half life of U.S. oil supply. It also represents the "peak" highest annual production. Every year after that would experience ever declining production following the declining right side of a normal distribution Bell curve. Kenneth Deffeyes extends the same methodology to the whole World oil supply, and infers that the peak will be reached between 2004 and 2008, and thereafter, oil production will decline very rapidly. What is wrong with that methodology? A lot, as will see. I tested King Hubbert prediction by plotting U.S. crude oil annual production from 1949 to 2001. I found out that the data is far more dispersed than a normal distribution is. Thus, King Hubbert use of a normal distribution is incorrect, and will lead to erroneous forecasts. Giving Mr. Hubbert a break, I figured what he really meant was symmetry from the peak. Thus, if you know the production in the peak year, you can forecast the production in the out years after that. Well, using this technique, I figured the production level 10 years after the peak (in 1980) should be the equal to the one 10 years before the peak (1960), and so on and so forth. This should be true even if the data was perfectly normally distributed or not. Doing so, I found that King Hubbert forecast underestimated actual U.S. oil production by 22% in 1980, 32% in 1985, and 36% in 1990. This is as far as I could go, given that I had no data before 1949. In view of the above, King Hubbert was really lucky in projecting the peak year to be between 1965 and 1970 (actual was in 1970), but his methodology totally missed the mark in forecasting U.S. oil production after 1970. Why was King Hubbert's forecast so off? Besides the statistical technicalities (data not normally distributed)) the main reason is that he missed the oil production from Alaska. Alaska started producing oil in 1959, but peaked in 1988. Thus, the life cycle of the Alaskan oil fields were totally different from the ones of the 48 lower states. Thus, for any prediction regarding oil production, it has to be done at the oil field level, not at a national level (or even worst World level). To streamline the data, you could group oil fields by starting date of oil production, and types (different geological conditions must lead to different production curves). Once you have your portfolio of oil field buckets so defined, you could observe the oil production level behavior of each bucket. With this data, you could then develop a Monte Carlo simulation with a few random variables that would influence oil production (oil price, conservation effort, etc.). From this you would develop a much richer output giving you a range of probability for specific oil production levels in any given year. Anything short of this effort won?t tell you anything statistically meaningful. When Kenneth Deffeyes extends the Hubbert methodology to the whole World he runs into other major roadblocks. Deffeyes has no idea what is the actual reserve level in the Middle East. This is not his fault, no one does. As mentioned in the book, Middle Eastern oil producers artificially boosted their reserve level numbers in the late eighties when OPEC started to allocate selling quotas proportional to countries reserves. However, the industry consensus is that these reserves were grossly understated before the late eighties. Thus, no one knows reserve numbers good enough for forecasting purposes. Deffeyes also makes a weak case that we have essentially discovered all the oil there is. I don?t think so. There is much oil field development going on in Russia and Kazakhstan. Additionally, the U.S. has greatly curtailed its oil production potential due to environmental restrictions affecting the Alaska Northern Wildlife Refuge, and the two coasts (California, Florida). These environmental regulations will be moderated or lifted as oil supply becomes a severe economic constraint. Similarly, I am not convinced that the Middle Eastern oil fields have been exploited to the limit of current technology. As we speak, Iraq's production is only progressively moving forward to its full potential. Thus, Deffeyes prediction will run in many "Alaska" type errors just as Hubbert did. His forecast will be just as flawed. Predicting the peak is one thing. Predicting how oil production declines over the next three decades is a lot more challenging and valuable to society. It is this aspect of the forecast that totally eludes Hubbert and Deffeyes methodology. Another of Deffeyes miscalculation is his belief that our society could very rapidly adapt to a post-oil economy. In other words, hydrogen and other fuel could quickly replace oil as the supporting fuel of our civilization. This is nuts. Mr. Deffeyes is a Cassandra on the oil outlook. Oil production will more than likely decline far slower than he predicts. But, he is a utopic Pollyanna on the oil energy substitution outlook. In other words, he is wrong on all counts.
Rating: 
Summary: Erratic
Review: This book provides a moderately strong argument that the production of cheap oil is peaking, although it isn't as conclusive an argument as I'd hoped for, and is only a little bit better than the brief summaries of Hubbert's ideas that I'd previously seen on the net.
Much of the book consists of marginally relevant stories of his career as a geologist. He occasionally slips in some valuable tidbits, such as that Texas once had an oil cartel.
He does a mediocre job of analyzing the consequences of scarcer oil. He provides a few hints of how natural gas could replace oil, but says much less about the costs of switching than I'd hoped for. His comments on how to protect yourself are misleading:
"In the past, a useful way of insuring major producers and consumers against the effect of a price changes was purchasing futures contracts. However, the ordinary futures contracts extend for a year or two. The oil problem extends for 10 years or more. The oil problem extends for 10 years or more. Anyone who agrees to supply oil 10 years from now, for a price agreed on today, very likely will disappear into bankruptcy before the contract matures."
At the time the book was first published (2001), crude oil futures contracts extended about 7 years out. They weren't liquid enough to hedge a large fraction of consumption, but if a desire to hedge had caused them to say in 2001 that crude would be at $60/barrel in 2008 rather than saying it would be in the low twenties, that would both have signaled a need to react and reduced the risks of doing so. The idea that bankruptcy would threaten such futures reflects his ignorance of the futures markets. An oil producer who sold futures as a hedge will almost certainly not sell more futures than it has oil to deliver on. Speculators might lose their shirts, but futures brokers have the experience needed to ensure that the defaults are small enough for the brokers to absorb (see, for example, what happened in the gold mania of the late 70s).
Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Great if You're a Geologist
Review: This is a fine book, but much of it explains how difficult it is for nature to make oil. This book could be used as a textbook for a petroleum/hydrocarbons/geology class. If you like the earth sciences, the oil formation material is fantastic. (I loved every letter, comma and smicolon.) If you don't, you'll only find yourself reading about a third to one fourth of the book. It's still worth buying, though.
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Summary: Helps You to Assess an Important Topic Objectively
Review: This is an important book for anyone wanting an informed view of the impending oil shortage. For me the book has significant strengths and a couple of relative weaknesses. First, Deffeyes discusses the methodology for forecasting oil resources and production rates over time (including footnotes, Chap 8). Deffeyes does not provide any new estimates, but references (Ref 2, Chap 1) published predictions up to 1998. Second, Deffeyes provides a detailed description of the geology and engineering methods for oil discovery and extraction. For the lay reader this could be heavy going, but Deffeyes does a good job of providing relevant information in a stimulating manner, often through amusing asides, which work most of the time. This material establishes that it is most unlikely there is a major oil field "waiting" to be discovered. Third, the book is well referenced which encourages further exploration of this important topic. For me some questions were unanswered. It is shown (p5) that production will peak in about 2004 to 2009, but there is no discussion of how the increasing cost of oil may affect future consumption and the ultimate end of the oil era (2075, 2100 ?). As oil impacts mainly on road transport there is no discussion of hydrogen-based (eg fuel cells) alternative energy sources (Chap 10). There is very little discussion of Natural Gas (closely related to oil as a resource and able to provide efficient electricity generation)and the scope for it to ease the transition out of the oil era. The discussion of alternative energy sources (Chap 10) is rather superficial and contains no economic or environmental assessment. On balance, this is a valuable contribution to everyone's assessment of their individual and our collective futures.
Rating: 
Summary: Same Old Story
Review: This old chestnut is what happens when you fall in love with a theory to the point that inconvenient facts that contradict it are brushed to one side. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story ! Having been in the oil industry for 25 years I believe the following facts are not given their due weight:-
1. Unconventional sources of oil and gas have the potential to double remaining conventional proven reserves - the resource potential in Alberta's oil sands and in Venezuela and elsewhere have only just begun to be tapped.
2. The Middle East has been very lightly explored compared to the Continental USA. It is too early to quantify the amount of undiscovered reserves.
3. The Former Soviet Union also has immense potential - the Communist regime never promoted true exploration but was obsessed with meeting short-term quota's. Very little deep drilling was undertaken. True some shallow reservoirs may have been damaged by overproduction but this is dwarfed by the potential in deeper zones and unexplored areas.
4. What is true is that except for the Middle East the low hanging fruit has been largely picked. Over time therefore oil prices are likely to stay relatively high to cover the higher costs of unconventional production and high transportation costs out of the FSU. Current prices of around $30 are high enough - investment is only held back by the threat of lower prices in future. If OPEC falls apart this may well happen in the next few years.
So expect volatility but forget the Doom & Gloom brigade.
Rating:
Summary: The End of Cheap Oil
Review: This primer, intended as an easy read for a general audience, is one of the most important books published in the last few years. It is essential reading for every member of Congress and anyone who wants to be prepared for the major transformation of the industrialized world that lies ahead. Already, it appears too late to avoid dislocations and achieve a smooth transition, but it is not too late for you to reflect the message of this book in your personal planning. This is not just another self-serving "doomsday" warning, it is all too real. Prof. Deffeyes has no ax to grind. He is neither a radical environmentalist nor a shill for the energy industry. His general conclusion -- that conventional oil production can not be ramped up to meet increases in global demand, or even sustained much longer at present levels -- is shared by other serious researchers and supported by anecdotal evidence [where reliable data is incomplete], as well. Colin Campbell's earlier book on this subject [much heavier reading]is hard to find,....
Rating: 
Summary: Shaken and stirred!
Review: Though the book does talk about its supposed subject (i.e. the impending shortage of oil), it comes across almost as a corollary to a discussion on the science of oil production. I must admit that I found this discussion rather engaging; though as a layman, it took me some effort and supplementary reading to comprehend the nature of the geological structures and statistical techniques described therein (and I still cannot claim to have understood it fully). The main strength of this book is that the author comes across as a person of intelligence, academic excellence and, above all, scientific integrity (a "geophysical" Richard Feynman). And it is this upright intellectual thread that runs through this book that makes me take it seriously enough to take the necessary effort in understanding his arguments. My reservation again is that the concept and forecast of peak oil could have been discussed in greater depth rather than trying to cover the substantial topic of replacement fuels / alternative energy propositions - where you get a feeling that the author has wandered away from his area of strength or has devoted too little time and effort for it. In either case, he could have left that for another day or another person. Anyway... bottomline - I bought the book and it was worth the money.
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Summary: Hubbert Piques Again
Review: To paraphrase the remark of another, what Deffeyes and his mentor, M. King Hubbert, have to say that is true is not new and what they have to say that is new is not true. The production of crude oil from a given region must, indeed, rise to a peak before it begins declining toward zero with, perhaps, a few local maxima along the way, unless the law of conservation of matter has been repealed. Another assumption, however, that the decline in the rate of production from its peak must be approximately the mirror image of its rise, is untrue. In fact, substantial symmetry in the production rate curve is seldom met in practice, of which more later. But without this assumption, they would be unable to argue that at the peak level of production one half the oil originally in place has been produced and, thus, that by doubling that amount, one gets a meaningful estimate of all oil ultimately to be produced.
One reason for this asymmetry is that after a given field begins production, its operators begin to offset future decline by using new and improved recovery techniques, by extending the limits of known reservoirs or by looking for nearby sources of production. As new production is brought on stream, it tends to occur later rather than earlier in the life of the field, i.e. the producing curve gets skewed to the right.
Each of these increments to the production of a particular field may be relatively small, but over time and across all fields in the region, the total can be quite substantial.
This readily observable phenomenon is of more than of mere academic interest. Both Hubbert and Deffeyes present their methodology as a tool for policy making. In the 1960s Hubbert's work was used to argue that crude oil shortages were imminent and that end-use controls should be imposed on the consumption of oil and gas in order to conserve them for " superior" uses.
Annual production of crude oil in the lower forty-eight states did peak as Hubbert (and most other students of the subject) had predicted around 1970 and then began to decline. BUT THE PATTERN OF DECLINE TOOK A FAR DIFFERENT PATH THAN HUBBERT HAD PREDICTED!
The expected sharp drop in production did not occur, the level of production declined more slowly than predicted and substantially more than half of all production occurs after the peak period. By 2000, the lower forty-eight states had produced all of the crude oil that Hubbert had predicted that they could ever produce. Yet, these fields, which according to his theory should have been sucked dry, were still producing five million barrels a day and contained reserves of seventeen billion barrels or seven or eight years of production at the then current rate.
And there's Alaska, which Hubbert explicitly assumed away, but which cannot rationally be ignored in formulating national energy policy. Since Hubbert's prediction, Alaska has produced fourteen billion barrels and has five billion more in proved reserves. Cumulative crude oil production to date in the United States plus current proved reserves amount to thirty percent more oil than Hubbert estimated, just forty years ago, would ever be available. Furthermore, much of the nation's most promising remaining geological provinces are still unexplored, many remaining "off limits" for environmental reasons. We should be grateful to our policy makers of four decades ago who had the wisdom and foresight to reject Hubbert's false alarms.
Today Deffeyes uses essentially the same methodology to argue that a world-wide shortage of crude oil is upon us. But, whereas Hubbert developed a technique to determine if the perceived peak were merely a local maximum or not, one does not find this nicety in Deffeyes. As a result, one should not lend too much credence to the timing of Deffeye's predicted decline in word-wide production.
But, even in the unlikely event that Deffeyes' prediction of impending doom is only off by a year or two, there is still no great cause for alarm. Just as Hubbert before him, Deffeyes assumes that production will decline in essentially the same pattern in which it rose. We know that this did not happen in the U.S.; there is no reason to believe that the pattern should be different abroad. We may infer, with some confidence, from our domestic experience, that when the inevitable decline does begin, it should not be nearly as abrupt as the rise, and that any potential shortages should evolve more slowly than he predicts.
In the meanwhile, we need to keep in mind that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with; it is not going to burst in on us overnight; it will give us time to manage it if we approach it in a rational manner. The last thing that we need is to be panicked into mounting a program of Manhattan Project sized proportions to deal with a problem that may not even be real and certainly is not as immediate as some would lead us to believe.
In short, our policy makers today should display the same wisdom that their predecessors did forty so years ago in rejecting the arguments of M. King Hubbert and his adherents. Further, let us learn once again, if we can, the folly of extrapolating history into the absurd. Unfortunately, theorists from Parson Malthus through The Club Of Rome leave little cause for optimism.
HUBBERT'S PEAK provides interesting anecdotal material about the petroleum industry but any contribution to those laboring on a national energy policy is, sad to say, lacking.
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