The Last Oil Shock
David Strahan
Published by: John Murray
Publication date: 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7195-6423-9
List price: £12.99
292 pp
www.lastoilshock.com
This is a deeply disturbing book.
Most geologists will at least know of the ‘Peak Oil’ concept introduced by M. King Hubbert in 1956. Few would be able to summarise as succinctly as David Strahan either the evidence for the inevitable decline in global oil production, starting within the next 15 years, or the likely results. This book deals not only with the technical factors that will produce the decline, with a sideways look at the record of the USGS in predicting global and US production (see Geoscientist, April 2007), but also with the probable political consequences.
The meat of the book is to be found in Chapters 2 to 8. One of Strahan’s strengths is his respect for his readers, and if graphs and statistics are what readers need to understand a point, then this is what they get. Having introduced Peak Oil in Chapter 2, he uses Chapters 3 and 4 to dispose of any comfort that might be gained from current ratios of reserves to production and from the existence of alternatives to conventional oil. The role of oil in modern economies is then summarised, and the way in which oil reserves are stated is explained. Anyone who, like me, found Shell’s recent massive reclassification of its reserves as mystifying and unimportant will learn, firstly, that it was not mysterious and, secondly, that it was important. The vexed question of OPEC oil reserves has a chapter to itself, and this is followed by a discussion of possible scenarios, none of them reassuring, for the arrival of the peak.
Strahan’s view is too controversial to accept without question, and a review of Jerry Leggett’s Half Gone (Geoscientist, January 2007) suggested the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) website as a good place to find an alternative. The analysis presented there is much more optimistic, but is it valid? The site includes an extended summary of the CERA view prepared as recently as November 2006. Surprisingly, much space is devoted to criticising Hubbert’s early predictions for the ‘contiguous’ US, yet the evidence cited shows these to have been astonishingly accurate. To imply, with CERA, that they have been disproved by discoveries in the quite separate deepwater Gulf of Mexico and Alaska provinces simply misrepresents Hubbert’s argument. Certainly, the US peak was delayed by a few years by production from areas that were unexplored in 1956, but where, today, are the unexplored provinces that will significantly delay the global peak? The entire US experience appears to support Hubbert’s hypothesis, and its extension to the whole world seems both logical and inevitable.
Strahan’s book is not without its weaknesses. It was a mistake, I think, to begin by arguing that the invasion of Iraq was prompted by US fears over future oil supplies. Even if this is true (and that will probably still be argued about long after the oil peak has passed), it is essentially irrelevant. Nor are the final chapters, which deal with the steps that should be taken by both ordinary people and politicians to minimise the inevitable disruptions, convincing. It seemed to me that Strahan himself feels that there is little chance of any of his good advice being followed until it is far too late. And on that point, I am afraid, he may well be right.
John Milsom
Gladestry