Following Oil

Following Oil
Author: Thomas A. Petrie
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-12-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0806146117

In a forty-year career as an oil and gas investment analyst and as an investment banker and strategic adviser on petroleum-sector mergers, acquisitions, and financings, Thomas A. Petrie has witnessed dramatic changes in the business. In Following Oil, he shares useful lessons he has learned about domestic and global trends in population and economic growth, a maturing resource base, variable national energy policies, and dynamic changes in geopolitical forces—and how these variables affect energy markets. More important, he applies those lessons to charting a course of energy development for the nation as the twenty-first century unfolds. By the 1970s, when Petrie began analyzing publicly traded securities in the energy sector, the petroleum investment market was depressed. The rise of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pushed energy to the center of the national security calculus of the United States and its allies. Price volatility would continue to whipsaw global markets for decades, while for consumers, cheap gasoline prices soon became a fond memory. Eventually, as Petrie puts it, finding oil on Wall Street became cheaper than drilling for it. Petrie uses this dramatic period in oil business history to relate what he has learned from “following oil” as a securities analyst and investment banker. But the title also refers to energy sources that could become available following eventual shrinkage of conventional-oil supplies. Addressing the current need for greener, more sustainable energy sources, Petrie points to recent large domestic gas discoveries and the use of new technologies such as horizontal drilling to unlock unconventional hydrocarbons. With these new sources, the United States can increase production and ensure itself enough oil and gas to sustain economic growth during the next several decades. Petrie urges the pursuit of cleaner fossil fuel development in order to buy the time to develop the technical advances needed to bridge the nation to a greener energy future, when wind, solar, and other technologies advance sufficiently to play a larger role.

After Oil

After Oil
Author: Imre Szeman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Petroleum
ISBN: 9780995042001

After Oil explores the social, cultural and political changes needed to make possible a full-scale transition from fossil fuels to new forms of energy. Written collectively by participants in the first After Oil School, After Oil explains why the adoption of renewable, ecologically sustainable energy sources is only the first step of energy transition. Energy plays a critical role in determining the shape, form and character of our daily existence, which is why a genuine shift in our energy usage demands a wholesale transformation of the petrocultures in which we live. After Oil provides readers with the resources to make this happen.

The Oil Curse

The Oil Curse
Author: Michael L. Ross
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-09-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691159637

Explaining—and solving—the oil curse in the developing world Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. What explains this oil curse? And can it be fixed? In this groundbreaking analysis, Michael L. Ross looks at how developing nations are shaped by their mineral wealth—and how they can turn oil from a curse into a blessing. Ross traces the oil curse to the upheaval of the 1970s, when oil prices soared and governments across the developing world seized control of their countries' oil industries. Before nationalization, the oil-rich countries looked much like the rest of the world; today, they are 50 percent more likely to be ruled by autocrats—and twice as likely to descend into civil war—than countries without oil. The Oil Curse shows why oil wealth typically creates less economic growth than it should; why it produces jobs for men but not women; and why it creates more problems in poor states than in rich ones. It also warns that the global thirst for petroleum is causing companies to drill in increasingly poor nations, which could further spread the oil curse. This landmark book explains why good geology often leads to bad governance, and how this can be changed.

The End of Oil

The End of Oil
Author: Paul Roberts
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2005-04-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0547525117

“A stunning piece of work—perhaps the best single book ever produced about our energy economy and its environmental implications” (Bill McHibbon, The New York Review of Books). Petroleum is so deeply entrenched in our economy, politics, and daily lives that even modest efforts to phase it out are fought tooth and nail. Companies and governments depend on oil revenues. Developing nations see oil as their only means to industrial success. And the Western middle class refuses to modify its energy-dependent lifestyle. But even by conservative estimates, we will have burned through most of the world’s accessible oil within mere decades. What will we use in its place to maintain a global economy and political system that are entirely reliant on cheap, readily available energy? In The End of Oil, journalist Paul Roberts talks to both oil optimists and pessimists around the world. He delves deep into the economics and politics, considers the promises and pitfalls of oil alternatives, and shows that—even though the world energy system has begun its epochal transition—we need to take a more proactive stance to avoid catastrophic disruption and dislocation.

When Oil Peaked

When Oil Peaked
Author: Kenneth S. Deffeyes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2010-09-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1429981326

In two earlier books, Hubbert's Peak (2001) and Beyond Oil (2005), the geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes laid out his rationale for concluding that world oil production would continue to follow a bell-shaped curve, with the smoothed-out peak somewhere in the middle of the first decade of this millennium—in keeping with the projections of his former colleague, the pioneering petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert. Deffeyes sees no reason to deviate from that prediction, despite the ensuing global recession and the extreme volatility in oil prices associated with it. In his view, the continued depletion of existing oil fields, compounded by shortsighted cutbacks in many exploration-and-development projects, virtually assures that the mid-decade peak in global oil production will never be surpassed. In When Oil Peaked, he revisits his original forecasts, examines the arguments that were made both for and against them, adds some new supporting material to his overall case, and applies the same mode of analysis to a number of other finite gifts from the Earth: mineral resources that may be also in shorter supply than "flat-Earth" prognosticators would have us believe.

Oil in the Sea III

Oil in the Sea III
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2003-03-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0309084385

Since the early 1970s, experts have recognized that petroleum pollutants were being discharged in marine waters worldwide, from oil spills, vessel operations, and land-based sources. Public attention to oil spills has forced improvements. Still, a considerable amount of oil is discharged yearly into sensitive coastal environments. Oil in the Sea provides the best available estimate of oil pollutant discharge into marine waters, including an evaluation of the methods for assessing petroleum load and a discussion about the concerns these loads represent. Featuring close-up looks at the Exxon Valdez spill and other notable events, the book identifies important research questions and makes recommendations for better analysis ofâ€"and more effective measures againstâ€"pollutant discharge. The book discusses: Inputâ€"where the discharges come from, including the role of two-stroke engines used on recreational craft. Behavior or fateâ€"how oil is affected by processes such as evaporation as it moves through the marine environment. Effectsâ€"what we know about the effects of petroleum hydrocarbons on marine organisms and ecosystems. Providing a needed update on a problem of international importance, this book will be of interest to energy policy makers, industry officials and managers, engineers and researchers, and advocates for the marine environment.

The Oil Crisis

The Oil Crisis
Author: Fiona Venn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317884000

In October 1973 two crises – one economic, one political – intersected, with dramatic and long term consequences for international relations. On 6 October, Egypt and Syria launched an attack on Israel, and within a few days the major Arab oil producers announced their support by use of the ‘oil weapon’, including a boycott of supplies for countries friendly to Israel and a programme of production cuts. This was followed by the unilateral declaration of a steep increase in the price of oil by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The result was international panic and world recession. Crude oil prices soared by a massive fourfold in just three months. The West's vulnerability had been exposed: it was being held hostage to oil. Yet, despite efforts to address this dependence on oil imports in following years, the 1979 Iranian Revolution triggered a further upward surge in prices. Today, the importance of oil remains at the forefront of the West's foreign policy calculations in the Middle East. In this fascinating and timely new look at the oil crisis, Fiona Venn examines these issues and the more unexpected effects of the crisis. She asks just how much really changed in the economic balance of power. Most importantly she argues that OPEC was used as a scapegoat for the world recession, which had been already underway when the crisis detonated.

The Secret World of Oil

The Secret World of Oil
Author: Ken Silverstein
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1781681376

The oil industry provides the lifeblood of modern civilization, and bestselling books have been written about the industry and even individual companies in it, like ExxonMobil. But the modern oil industry is an amazingly shady meeting ground of fixers, gangsters, dictators, competing governments, and multinational corporations, and until now, no book has set out to tell the story of this largely hidden world. The global fleet of some 11,000 tankers—that's tripled during the past decade—moves approximately 2 billion metric tons of oil annually. And every stage of the route, from discovery to consumption, is tainted by corruption and violence, even if little of that is visible to the public. Based on trips to New York, Washington, Houston, London, Paris, Geneva, Phnom Penh, Dakar, Lagos, Baku, and Moscow, among other far-flung locals, The Secret World of Oil includes up-close portraits of a shadowy Baku-based trader; a high-flying London fixer; and an oil dictator's playboy son who has to choose one of his eleven luxury vehicles when he heads out to party in Los Angeles. Supported by funding from the prestigious Open Society, this is both an entertaining global travelogue and a major work of investigative reporting.

Oil Revolution

Oil Revolution
Author: Christopher R. W. Dietrich
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2017-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 131673952X

Through innovative and expansive research, Oil Revolution analyzes the tensions faced and networks created by anti-colonial oil elites during the age of decolonization following World War II. This new community of elites stretched across Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, and Libya. First through their western educations and then in the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, these elites transformed the global oil industry. Their transnational work began in the early 1950s and culminated in the 1973–4 energy crisis and in the 1974 declaration of a New International Economic Order in the United Nations. Christopher R. W. Dietrich examines how these elites brokered and balanced their ambitions via access to oil, the most important natural resource of the modern era.

Oil Markets and Prices

Oil Markets and Prices
Author: Paul Horsnell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1993
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The market for North Sea Brent Oil directly determines the price of over one-half of the world trade in crude oil. This study analyzes the workings of the oil market and describes how crude oil prices are determined throughout the world. It covers OPEC pricing, futures markets for oil, the impact of the UK taxation regime, and the mechanisms by which the world price of oil is determined. The text should be of benefit to those working in the areas of futures and forward markets, OPEC behaviour, North Sea oil, oil taxation and oil prices.