Book Review: “Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak”

Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak is part history, part memoir, and a whole lot of geology. Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a Professor Emeritus at Princeton and former researcher for Shell, tells the story of how the earth turned ancient plants and algae into modern fossil fuels, how we extract these fuels from the ground, and what future energy supplies the depths of the earth have to offer.

Beyond Oil evaluates a host of energy sources – petroleum, natural gas, coal, tar sands, oil shale, uranium, and hydrogen – and evaluates advantages, disadvantages, and practical concerns of each.  Deffeyes is first and foremost a geologist, and approaches the book through this lens. He admits he is not an economist and makes no attempt to predict the future of the economy other than to say that, “Business as usual is not in the cards.”

The Peak

In the book’s first chapters, Deffeyes walks us through the basic methodology behind Hubbert’s peak. Named for its original theorist M. King Hubbert, Hubbert’s model tries to predict future levels of petroleum extraction. After an oil industry, whether it be single country or the entire world market, has had a chance to mature, production tends to fall into a fairly consistent pattern. By dividing the current annual production levels by the cumulative production up to that year, Hubbert’s model predicts how much oil will be extracted in the coming years.

Hubbert gained fame for using this model to the peak of oil production in the United States. In 1956, he predicted the peak would arrive between 1965 and 1970. In 1970, America produced the most oil it would ever produce in a single year. In Beyond Oil (written in 2005), Deffeyes uses Hubbert’s methodology to predict that the world now stands on a similar plateau. He nominated Thanksgiving 2005 as Peak Oil day.

This estimate has proven to be at least technically incorrect. Production levels for the first half of 2008 exceeded 2005 production levels. However, the current global recession has already dampened production, as OPEC cut its production goals by 1.5 million barrels a day in October in an attempt to boost prices. Once the recession begins to wane, we will see whether or not production levels can continue to rise, or if we are indeed on top of Hubbert’s Peak.

Mommy, Where does Oil Come From?

Deffeyes spends about three quarters of the book describing where oil, coal, natural gas, and other energy sources come from. This sort of thing isn’t for everyone, but if is, Deffeyes has drawn upon his years of teaching experience to present the science in a clear and concise manner. His descriptions of the ins and outs of mining shale oil and oil sands were particularly enlightening. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard proponents of peak oil say that oil sands aren’t economical, or a drill-now nationalist proclaim that the U.S. has more oil than any country on earth thanks to our shale oil, without ever explaining why its not economical or how we’re going to mine the shale oil. Deffeyes describes each of these sources and how useful they might be in detail.

Like any good professor, Deffeyes strayed a little off-topic sometimes, and these tangents provide some of the most entertaining parts of the book. In one such example, Deffeyes shatters the myth that Regan brought down the USSR by spending lots of money on big weapons, a classic defense of the military-industrial complex. Deffeyes explains that by the mid-1980’s, the USSR emerged as one of the world’s largest oil exporters. In 1985, the USSR was exporting 2 million barrels of oil a day (three times what the Saudis produced at the time), giving it enough money to purchase what it couldn’t produce enough of, such as food and electronics. It so happened, however, that Russia’s costs of production were significantly higher than those in Saudi Arabia. When Saudi Arabia simply flooded the market with oil priced below Russia’s cost of production, cutting off the USSR’s supply of money, and hence its ability to purchase imports. After six years of severe shortages, the Soviet Union collapsed. If you’re searching for a comprehensive book on energy policy, this isn’t what you’re looking for.

At its heart, Beyond Oil is a series of lectures delivered by a man with a deep passion for geology and the future of energy mined from the ground (Deffeyes believes the most effective way to produce hydrogen is with natural gas or coal). If you want to get a better grasp of what the future holds in store for fossil fuels, Hubbert’s Peak, or unconventional sources like oil sands or shale oil, Beyond Oil is a good bet.

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