Hubbert's Peak

by Deffeyes, Kenneth S.

• ISBN13: 9780691090863
• ISBN10: 0691090866
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Were the energy concerns of the past year a preview of everyone's future? Will gas lines in the coming years make those of 1973 look short? Is the present chaos in oil prices the leading edge of a more serious crisis that will rock national economies around the world? According to Kenneth Deffeyes, a geologist with extensive personal experience in the oil industry, the answer to all of these questions is yes. World oil production is peaking and will start to fall for good sometime during this decade.In 1956, geophysicist M. King Hubbert--then working at the Shell research lab in Houston--predicted that U.S. oil production would reach its highest level in the early 1970s. Though roundly criticized by oil experts and economists, Hubbert's prediction came true in 1971. The hundred-year period during which most of the world's oil was discovered became known as Hubbert's peak--a span of time almost comically shorter than the hundreds of millions of years the oil deposits took to form.Using the same methods that Hubbert used to make his stunningly accurate prediction, Deffeyes finds that a peak in world oil production is less than five years away. And he argues that new exploration and production technologies can't save us. While long-term solutions exist in the form of conservation and alternative energy sources, they probably cannot--and almost certainly will not--be enacted in time to evade short-term catastrophe.Perhaps most surprising is that none of this is news to most specialists and many associated with the petroleum industry. But politicians, the media, and the public at large aren't hearing about it. Deffeyes wants to make sure they do. Thoroughly accessible and filled with entertaining anecdotes, his book demonstrates to the general reader why a global energy crisis is just around the corner. And, though the near-term scenario is ugly, he tells us what we can do as countries and individuals to thrive after Hubbert's peak has passed.

Author Biography

Kenneth S. Deffeyes is Professor Emeritus at Princeton University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Overview	1	(13)
The Origin of Oil	14	(26)
Oil Reservoirs and Oil Traps	40	(30)
Finding It	70	(18)
Drilling Methods	88	(25)
Size and Discoverability of Oil Fields	113	(20)
Hubbert Revisited	133	(17)
Rate Plots	150	(9)
The Future of Fossil Fuels	159	(17)
Alternative Energy Sources	176	(10)
A New Outlook	186	(5)
Notes	191	(14)
Index	205