Product Description

It is widely accepted that global discoveries of conventional oil have peaked and that the era of cheap oil has gone forever. This book demonstrates that the doom and gloom of the "Peak Oil" theory is mistaken. Clarke rebuts the arguments of Peak Oil's adherents and discusses the issues they ignore - rising crude oil prices, new or future technologies, potential improved exploration acreage and/or access to restricted world oil zones, changes in government policies, new corporate strategies, development in unconventional oils, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #489789 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
"A brilliant insight into the world upstream, Peak Oil, international corporate strategies, geopolitics, business, economics and technology." Dr. Alfred J. Boulos, former Senior Director, International, Conoco Inc., former President of the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators "Lucidly shows that not all is known on potential oil reserves-in-ground, and that Peak Oil is very wrong on its view that such reserves are now fully known and finite." Fred Dekker, Managing Director, Wessex Exploration, and former Vice President, Asia Pacific New Ventures, Unocal Corporation"

André Coajou, former Senior Executive, Elf Aquitaine
'Peak Oil has caught global attention... Duncan Clarke has
demystified this dogma and shown the crude realities'

The Guardian
`The Battle for Barrels says we should take warnings of impending Armageddon with a pinch of salt.'

Customer Reviews

Transparent obfuscation
A few good things can be said about this book:

1)Its a good study guide for those wishing to understand the different methods used to attempt to undermine arguments when you have very little rationale points to offer.
2)For those with even the least bit of knowledge about Peak Oil theory this book will show them that the arguements against Peak Oil are extremely thin.

Some of the 'argument' styles used throughout the book include:

1)Use of perjorative and ridiculing language throughout the book when discussing peak oil and its theorists
2)Straw man arguments - concentrating on the extreme views or quotes expressed by individuals rather than the mainstream
3)Falsly claiming to have already dealt with certain points when actually they have not
4)Contradictory arguments - e.g. claiming that peak oil theories are immutable and then attacking them for flexing dates
5)Severe lack of references when quoting estimates
6)Avoidance - lack of discussion on both EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested), lack of discussion on Chris Skrebowski's mega project analysis, whilst claiming all Peak Oil theorist follow the Hubbert Model.
7)A priori or circular arguments - e.g. Clarke believes more oil exists than Peak Oil theory does and then criticises Peak Oil for not recognising that more oil exists.
8) Plain ridiculous - e.g. saying that Peak Oil theorist cannot be believed until they do a field by field analysis - when they have been crying out for field by field data for years. Claiming that because they don't account for all variable (including future political events!) the theory in fundamentally flawed.

Being Kind with this Rating
Okay, the reason that I bought this book is that I am a mature well rounded fellow who appreciates counter arguments and I felt that Peak Oil was so frightening in its implications that it required balancing.

I found this book UNREADABLE and I still haven't read it cover to cover and am not sure whether I will or not. Peak Oil writers are at least articulate and all the main books on the subject can be picked up - opened at any page - and then devoured at leisure. This one can't be.

The subject is crying out for a heavy hitter to articulate the counter arguments to the masses like myself - I emphasize the word 'articulate'. This book just does not do the job and has pushed me even more firmly towards the Peak Oilers

Utter nonsense
Colin Campbell, a real geophysicist, who therefore understands the finite capacity we have of producing marketable flow, once described the "controversy" over peak oil as being between the geologists and economists. That's realist versus idealist. Please understand that Duncan Clarke is the latter - an economists. But of the worst sort, someone with the wherewithal to spread deceit as just another economic hit man. Such men live in a fantasy world where human ingenuity is supposedly able to overcome any practical limits of reality, whether those limits are geological constraints, workers, or human conscience. Those with fortunes to protect, based on the London and New York merchantile exchanges, the house of cards built with petrodollar recycling and its many derivatives, are now in stark raving fear mode. Such economists would have us believe in schemes of continued investment in all that petroleum and natural gas infrastructure. After all, there really are fortunes to protect. The immanent collapse of the growth economy, and all that serves, is indeed fearsome. Investors have shown quite the propensity to panic in the markets, and must not let that happen, now should we? Better to keep the dream alive, huh? To concoct fantasies of ever more available petroleum reserves and to dismiss the half century of sound geological science on which modern predictions of an immanent peak in world productive capacity are based, is dangerous to the extreme. Like the pied piper of old, Duncan would lead us where we must not go. Don't bother reading the book, if it is even readable. Stay focused in reality, and please make wise investment choices, of which there are many to choose.