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Apart from the opening chapters that lay out the thesis that global oil production is about to peak in just a few short years, most of the book deals with basic oil geology. It gets quite technical, and I could not help but feel that several of the chapters were "filler" material, not directly related to the book's title. Still, it is a pretty good primer on oil exploration science, history and techniques.
Another chapter deals with the mathematics of Mr. Deffeyes's predictions (simple curve fitting, unfortunately) and another (very short one) with alternative energy sources.
The book is short and readable but it provides no new insight. We know that oil is a non-renewable resource and that production will peak in the future. A more useful analysis would have been to take into account the impact of alternatives (hydrogen, solar, wind, etc.)and environmental constraints on supply/demand projections. That would have provided a more thorough (and probably more accurate) view of our energy future.
All in all, a useful book to have if you are interested in energy matters, but not a great one.
Deffeyes presents the idea of Peak Oil from first principles. He explains what oil is, what an oil field is, how it came to be there and importantly, how we found the field and extract the oil from it. The language used is excellent with enough humour and stories to keep what could be a very dry subject lively.
Once the above is covered it becomes clear how the rate of extraction form a single oil field must follow the famous bell curve with the area under the curve representing the field's endowment. Summation of the bell curves for all fields in the world goes on the produce a single large bell curve, the area under it now representing the planets total oil endowment. Peak oil extraction occurs once approximately half the original endowment is used - around about now then!
It also becomes clear that new discoveries and technology improvements are unlikely to be significant.
Deffeyes writes with great authority. He has been working as a geologist both for the oil industry and latter in academia his entire life.
The book is focused on oil and oil extraction and nothing else. It does not address any economic, sociological or political implications of Peak Oil.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who desires a logical, technical explanation of why less oil will be available in the near future than now. That single point is covered extremely well, making this book a fantastic introduction to Peak Oil.
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