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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
For those who wonder why certain countries insist on developing nuclear power, geologist Deffeyes has a possible answer: "World oil production has ceased growing." In this sobering, instructive and somewhat apocalyptic book, Deffeyes (Hubbert's Peak) paints a bleak picture of the future of fossil fuels and of what will happen to the world without them. Deffeyes bases his book on the work of M. King Hubbert, who mathematically determined that the world's oil supply would peak in 2000 and then drop steadily thereafter. Deffeyes tackles the mathematics of Hubbert's method and offers his own prediction (that the peak will occur at the end of 2005), but there is plenty here for those who aren't enamored with numbers, including a crash course in the slow evolution of oil. Oil and its related petroleum byproducts, Deffeyes points out, have changed the world economically, technologically and socially, and its absence could have a similarly massive, though negative, effect. Deffeyes predicts that famine, war and death will result from the shortages, but he does more than just sound the alarm: a large portion of the book is devoted to surveying the pros and cons of alternative resources like coal and hydrogen. Though Deffeyes offers only a few practical suggestions for the reader, most of which are obvious (i.e., get on a waitlist for a hybrid car), this is an earnestly written cautionary tale and a great resource for anyone looking to become energy literate. B&W illustrations and diagrams. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Deffeyes' survey of oil production shares the central thesis of Out of Gas, by David Goodstein (2004). Both cite Hubbert's Peak, a prediction of when petroleum output will reach an apex and decline irreversibly. That'll happen on November 24, 2005, Deffeyes lightheartedly announces, and after detailing the mathematical formula by which Hubbert's Peak is calculated, he examines options for postponing the inevitable. That is, how could geologists and engineers get more oil out of the ground? Could they discover more? Extract it more efficiently? Mine oil shale? Increase coal or natural-gas production? For each of these topics, Deffeyes delves into the geophysical characteristics of the fuel's source rocks and how those affect the economics of retrieving it; he then returns the discussion to its beginning: that the world is near or on Hubbert's Peak. Deffeyes' background as an oil-company geologist and university professor lends a realistic pragmatism to his presentation, which is replete with personal anecdotes and funny remarks that enliven his text. A practical yet genial treatment. Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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75 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
 Finally Some Decent Info About Oil Shale And Tar Sands, March 17, 2005
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.)
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146 of 147 people found the following review helpful:
 A geologist's study of Peak Oil and likely consequences, March 28, 2005
This succinct book is an engaging view of Peak Oil by a gruff, no-nonsense petroleum geologist. It is not just a concise overview of the origins of oil and the significance of the Peak. Think of the Peak as that era when the price of oil soars because supply can no longer meet demand, no matter how hard the effort to increase production. For the mathematically literate, Deffeyes gives the best popular explanation yet of the Hubbert method of calculating Peak Oil. Deffeyes curve-fit puts the peak at 2006 - hence his sense of urgency.
Yet the major emphasis of the book is on the energy alternatives. Coming from an academic geologist deeply rooted in the culture of the energy industries, the chapters on natural gas, coal, nuclear, tar sands, and oil shale are most welcome. Most of the books on Peak Oil are not by geologists, so their assessments on these subjects are second hand. Deffeyes 2001 book, Hubbert's Peak - The Impending World Oil Shortage, focused mostly on conventional oil.
There are two extremes to the views on Peak Oil. Some people, often termed "cornucopians", say not to worry - technology will come to the rescue, energy alternatives will take over as soon as the price is right. Others, the "prophets of doom", predict the collapse of industrial civilization and human population via environmental degradation, warfare, disease, and famine. Or at best they predict a return to a primitive 19th century style of existence with far fewer people on the planet. Deffeyes predicts tough going, but he also outlines a way for us to scrape through a few more decades until more sustainable technology can be developed and scaled up. The kind of civilization that can be sustained over the long haul is still an open question.
His short term fixes (p. 183) include small diesel cars that get 90 miles per gallon, coal fired electrical power plants, wind turbines, and nuclear power plants. It also looks like the old Fisher-Tropsch process for coal gasification will be revived to produce aviation and diesel fuel. On the one hand environmentalists alarmed by global warming can hardly wait for Peak Oil in order to cut back on green house gases. On the other hand, the use coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, is even more alarming. Deffeyes advocates pumping the carbon dioxide waste underground, but currently it mostly goes up the smokestack. However unpalatable some of these fixes may be to many citizens, I must confess that they seem quite likely, based on current politics and economics.
A few errata and quibbles: On p. 16 the permeability increases 100 times, not 1 million times, when the grain size increase by 10, according to the quadratic law he cites. For the P and 1/P equations in the graph on p. 41, delete the + sign. On the bottom of p. 40 he claims that the actual peak must happen at or before the peak of the model curve (a logistic), which is a very close fit to the historical data from 1958 to the present. However this is just a model - due to economics or politics the actual peak could happen either before or after the model peak.
In fact, since the market for oil is global, prices will be far more important for the world peak oil than for country-level peak oil. Suppose there were an oil shock right now. Then financial hardship would force a sharp drop in oil usage over the next few years while there would be an all-out effort to quickly drill even the most costly and marginal oil fields. This would, of course, cause a peak right now, but it could soon lead to an excess of supply over demand, a drop in oil prices, then a renewal of latent demand that could drive production to a higher peak in the future. That is, the period of peak oil would be stretched out to become more like a jagged plateau. However by extracting more of the remaining oil sooner rather than later, the subsequent drop off would be even more severe.
Even without an oil shock, over a short time frame, current data trumps modeling. It normally takes many years from oil discovery to production, so it is already known what is in the pipeline. One recent UK study identified many major oil fields coming online through 2007 but few thereafter. A study of peak oil for major oil companies predicted 2008 on the average. This may explain why Colin Campbell's peak oil date is 2008. Nevertheless the logistic curve has a logical derivation in this context and it is the solution of a simple and widely applied nonlinear differential equation, so it is quite convincing as a rough model. I expect Hubbert's Peak to become a standard example in future texts on mathematical modeling. The cornucopians faith in technological and free market magic is soon to be sorely tested.
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Customer Reviews
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Enjoyable and informative, March 23, 2007
This is a great book. Prof. Deffeyes obviously knows his stuff. He displays an incredible depth and breadth of knowledge about all forms of energy production and a whole lot more. Given the amount of information in the book, it's nothing short of amazing how much fun it is to read. His plain-spoken style and humorous comments make it a pleasure from beginning to end.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Beyond Petroleum!, March 17, 2007
Welcome to the post-Hubbert peak, the world beyond oil!
"Business as usual is not in the cards," writes author Kenneth Deffeyes, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and a recognized expert on energy. "Whether we like it or not, there will be major rearrangements in the world economy. It would be more orderly if we were to generate a blueprint for a society constrained by the availability of resources. Then we need a noncatastrophic pathway that takes us from here to that blueprint."
Unlike his previous book ("Hubbert's Peak. The Impending World Oil Shortage") "Beyond Oil" is my more readable and accessable to the layman. Deffeyes reviews the origins of oil and Hubbert's calculations, but then goes on to discuss gas, coal, tar sands and heavy oil, uranium, and hydrogen. He then sums up the world's energy situation in a chapter he calls "The Big Picture".
Deffeyes argues that the world has already reached its peak oil production and that henceforth oil production can only decline.
There are, however, shortcomings to Deffeyes methodology. He greatly underestimates, in my opinion, the impact of ethynol. Currently, ethynol comprises 2.5 percent of America's energy (about 5 billion barrels a year) and this is due to double within the next two years. Yes, it is not as efficient as oil to produce - it takes more energy to produce ethynol than the ethynol itself produces - but America has land and corn (and other crops) to produce ethynol in relative abundance.
The author also fails to discuss in any depth the development of synthetic fuels, which the U.S. government has been pursuing very aggressively and, if reports are to be believe, successfully.
The author also writes briefly and incorrectly about the growing world population, a topic well outside his realm of expertise. Recent trends in demographics indicate that the population of the world will actually stabilize at around 9 billion and then decline in around 2050. The problem will not be an exploding population; the problem will be a shortage of labor worldwide.
Still, this is a tremendously well written book. And to his credit Deffeyes discusses what the individual American citizen should do to make his or her life easier. (The author begins this portion of the book with the following sentence: "Lets have a private talk around the kitchen table.")
In short, this book is everything that "Hubbert's Peak" is not.
And its message is clear: We are finally running out of oil and as a result, we are headed for major dislocations in the world's economy.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Powering the way into our future, February 15, 2007
The author, Kenneth Deffeyes is a geologist and former employee of the oil industry. As such, he knows more about the oil industry than many politicians and commentators. Using his knowledge, he has put forth a follow-up to his previous book on Hubbert's Peak. In short, the book is basically two ideas combined into one. The first idea is that the world's supply of obtainable oil is finite and will run out. This point is argued by referring to Hubbert's Peak, a concept that says that the amount of oil taken out of the ground per time looks like a bell curve, and that the US is over the [...] of this curve in that we have passed the point of maximum oil production. Second, the author explores a series of alternative energy sources such as nuclear, natural gas, coal, and fuel cells. In this part, he shows the advantages and disadvantages of each of these alternatives, and what technological advances and political changes would be needed to more fully exploit these them.
The overall feel of the book is a frank discussion of America's energy future. The facts discussed are probably covered in other books, but this work presents them in a quick and brisk manner. All in all, a good read and worth the time.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Too dry to read, February 12, 2007
The book talks about potential alternative energy sources without any mentioning on the economic implication. I found it very dry to chew.
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