Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak

Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak
by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak
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Book Summary Information

Author: Kenneth S. Deffeyes
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-06-13
ISBN: 080902957X
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Hill and Wang

Book Reviews of Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak

Book Review: A fine introduction to fossil fuels and the consequences of their depletion.
Summary: 5 Stars

For everyone who wants a quick and credible answer to the question, "Are we really running out of fossil fuels?", this is the book. Kenneth Deffeyes explains why your life and the lives of your children may soon become unimaginably different from what our comfortable generation expects. His book will make you a better citizen and a cocktail party expert, while providing you with a few evenings of top quality entertainment.

For most of the book, Deffeyes talks about what he knows best, which is predicting the availability of fossil fuels. He covers all of them: oil, gas, and coal, including their strange variations and hopeful new sources. Included is the history and technique of fossil fuels - especially oil - and its astounding political effects.

A petroleum geologist who began his career working with M. King Hubbert, Deffeyes provides the easiest interpretation of Hubbert's method of predicting the depletion of resources. Deffeyes doesn't explain Hubbert's underlying rationale, which was murky, but he clarifies the "Hubbert curve" in a wonderful way. This analysis, along with its limitations, should be understood by every educated citizen.

The big question is whether Hubbert's analysis could be wrong or irrelevant, so that we may be saved by new sources of hydrocarbon energy. Deffeyes covers the known and conjectured alternatives. A few proven alternatives are not big enough to make much difference. One huge resource, methane hydrates, is tentatively estimated to contain many times more energy than all fossil fuels combined. The trouble is, nobody knows how to extract it. Tar sands, another huge resource, consume precious natural gas to extract the oil, and they are an environmental horror. Oil shale ("neither oil nor shale") is a vast store of organic material that has defied attempts to extract it with a significant energy profit. Deffeyes deals briefly with Thomas Gold's conjecture of deep supplies of primordial methane, and he is unconvinced.

He then gives a brief gloss on uranium, perhaps the most important alternative to fossil fuels. His main contribution is to clarify how much uranium is actually available. Deffeyes himself played a role in making this information public.

The last of his topics is a genuflection to the "hydrogen economy." While suggesting a variety of applications for this less-than-zero-sum game, his telling adds little hope that hydrogen will help much in the long run.

He ends with a few pages of musing on the future, where unfortunately he steps outside his expertise. Like most experts on the supply side of energy, he seriously underestimates the potential and necessity of energy efficiency. This common error doesn't seriously tarnish an otherwise exemplary exposition.

As the author of a book on energy efficiency that is eight times longer than Deffeyes', I envy his ability to cover so much in a book that can be read over a weekend. While sharing the lecture circuit with Deffeyes, I saw him as a Falstaffian figure with a jolly sense of humor about a grim subject. Retired as a Princeton professor, he is proud of having spent most of his career working with roustabouts. His personality shines through in his writing style, which is a hoot.

The one major flaw is a misleading title. This book says essentially nothing about the period "beyond oil," when civilization must be fully converted to new energy sources and extreme efficiency. Its main focus is the present declining period of fossil fuels, when we may still be able to make the transition successfully. As Deffeyes makes clear, that transition must be made quickly.

Summary of Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak

"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, has become ever more urgent, as a spate of books has drawn increased public attention to the imminent exhaustion of the economically vital world oil reserves. Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a geologist who was among the first to warn of the coming oil crisis, now takes the next logical step and turns his attention to the earth's supply of potential replacement fuels. In Beyond Oil, he traces out their likely production futures, with special reference to that of oil, utilizing the same analytic tools developed by his former colleague, the pioneering petroleum-supply authority M. King Hubbert.

"The bad news in this book is made bearable by the author's witty, conversational writing style. If my college econ textbooks had been written this way, I might have learned economics." --Rupert Cutler, The Roanoke Times

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