Hubbert’s Peak
The Impending World Oil Shortage
by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

---

Published in 2001 by Princeton University Press, price $22.00

      This thin volume, 208 pages including notes and index, was suggested by a couple of people for review.  So, although it is preaching to the choir, here's what I found.

      Hubbert' Peak is a review of the petroleum industry, its tools and methodology, past, present and future.  It is a chatty, conversational presentation of the energy business to a presumably interested general public.  In fact, it is a difficult to know just who the readers of this odd volume were expected to be.  After a brief introduction of Hubbert and the focus of the book, the author takes off on an entertaining, but generalized description of the oil industry and its techniques.  The second half of the book deals with Hubbert's statistical techniques and the author's adaptation of those techniques.  The last couple of chapters deal with the question of what to do when all the oil is gone.

      The author knows the industry.  Kenneth Deffeyes was born in Oklahoma to a petroleum engineer and grew up in the oil patch.  He graduated from the Colorado School of Mines, worked for Shell Oil (when Hubbert was there) and is currently a Professor Emeritus in geology at Princeton University.  More importantly, he spent a couple of years in Great Bend when he was a boy. 

      The first part of the book presents petroleum chemistry, source rock, hydrocarbon generation, migration and trapping, exploration and production techniques in layman's language.  It necessarily leaves out huge areas of detail to get the subject covered and although it is filled with entertaining stories and asides, it will not give KGS members much new information.  It is basically Deffeyes ground work for the assertion of his book's title which is based on extrapolation of M. King Hubbert's famous Shell research paper that accurately predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil production would peak in the early 1970's.

      When the book finally does address the question posed by its title, the answer left me with quite a few question regarding the details of Deffeyes extrapolation and the numbers he used.  Nevertheless,  the author predicts that world oil production will peak between 2003 and 2009 and that absolutely nothing can significantly alter his prediction.  I can't say I know enough of the subject to intelligently judge this assertion, but the presentation is certainly believable and I like his conclusions. 

      The end of the book includes a discussion of alternative energy sources and points out the folly of expecting to be saved from future energy starvation by sources and techniques that require more energy to acquire than they can deliver.  Ladies and gentlemen, oil and gas prices are going up. 

      Other than a good review of the industry and some future arguing points, the book is probably best for the general reader and those who talk about the oil industry, but have no real background in it.

      Reporters, journalists, stock brokers and investors are probably the readers to benefit most from Hubbert's Peak.  Be aware, if you buy it for your investors' Christmas present, that Kansas comes in for a part of the discussion regarding the super-mature production that characterizes the down-hill side of the Hubbert curve.

      The book is full of short jokes and anecdotes.  This is my favorite:  A lady goes into a fabric store looking for a nice fabric for a nightgown.  After finding something suitably frilly, she ordered 17 yards.  When the salesclerk suggests this is a lot more than she needs, the lady answers; "My husband is an exploration geologist and for them, looking for it is as much fun as finding it."

      Like most of the book, not entirely true, but close enough. 

Bob Stolzle