Product Description

This may be the most important book you or anyone else will read in the next fifty years. Assuming humanity survives that long. Draining the lifeblood of industrial civilization, the terminal decline of oil and gas production will spark a crisis far more dangerous than international terrorism, and more urgent than climate change. World leaders know it, so why aren’t they telling?

The last oil shock is the secret behind the crises in Iraq and Iran, the reason your gas bill is going through the roof, the basis of a secret deal cooked up in Texas between George Bush and Tony Blair, the cause of an imminent and unprecedented economic collapse, and the reason you may soon be kissing your car keys and boarding pass goodbye. David Strahan explains how we reached this critical state, how the silence of governments, oil companies and environmentalists conspires to keep the public in the dark, what it means for energy policy, and what you can do to protect yourself and your family from the ravages of the last oil shock.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #181370 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
‘Strahan’s an excellent guide, providing readable, well-explained arguments for putting this subject atop the agenda’

 

(Sue Baker, Publishing News )

'People need to get hold of this, read it, pass it on and then do something positive with the valuable knowledge they have gained'

(www.powerswitch.org.uk )

'This is a well researched and documented book and David Strahan pulls no punches in his analysis of the world's impending energy problems. Not everyone will agree with every word but I commend it as a really good and informative read on a topic that affects us all'

(Lord Oxburgh, former Chairman of Shell )

'This book can be considered a primer for people who are new to peak oil, but also old hands will find it worth reading for its useful insights'

(Ugo Bardi, Energy Bulletin )

‘An excellent book … Strahan is first of all a superb journalist’

(Drydipstick.com )

About the Author
David Strahan is an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, and has worked for the BBC's The Money Programme and Horizon. He has produced major documenatries, including Inside the Enron Scandal and No Accounting for Greed  (about the collapse of Arthur Andersen). This is his first book.

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Customer Reviews

A book rich in insights
The Last Oil Shock - book review

by Ugo Bardi

After years of work on peak oil, it is rare for me to find a book written for the general public that can teach me something I didn't know before. But with David Strahan's book, "The Last Oil Shock," it was a different matter. While I often just thumb through this kind of books, this one was worth reading carefully, line by line.

Books on peak oil, so far, have been written mostly by geologists, and in general by scientists. Their approach is normally rather impersonal and is based on the analysis of literature data. Strahan's approach, instead, is that of the investigative journalist and it is based on interviews. The result is lively and rich in insights. For instance, Strahan manages to make a convincing case that the people in power know much more about peak oil than they care to tell to us, the poor petroleum peasants. Maybe you suspected that already, but Strahan will give you much food for thought on the matter.

When discussing the theory behind peak oil, Strahan tells us the human side of Hubbert's story, his struggle against the USGS, and the psychological profile of his enemies, prophet of abundance of their times, who were proved famously wrong by history. It is a story that cannot be found anywhere else (as far as I know) and that would be impossible to put together from the dry text of the scientific papers of the time. Also, the story of how the oil wells of Iraq were badly damaged, perhaps permanently, by the embargo of the 1990s is something which would be impossible to piece together from the media and very difficult to understand from the scientific literature.

A chapter absolutely worth reading is the one on economics, where Strahan discusses the huge gaps in the standard economic theory, the one called "neoclassical," and how these gaps led economists to a dangerous underestimation of the importance of energy in the world's economy. If you think you know everything about oil, everything about renewable energy, and even everything about politics, still you should get this book just for this chapter. Unless you can spend tens of hours wading through specialized economics tests, you won't be able to understand the matter as it is clearly explained here.

Not everything is perfect in this book and the chapter on alternatives to oil is perhaps a weak section. It is in part because of the sheer size of the field, but also because Strahan doesn't use the concept of "energy return on energy investment" (EROEI) which is the real discriminant among the various energy technologies. For this reason, the criticism of Strahan against renewable energy turns out to be somewhat too harsh. However, he does manage to hack to death, correctly, such wild ideas as the hydrogen based economy and biofuels as replacement for fossil fuels. Another (relative) weakness of the book is its focus on the British situation; that makes some parts of the text of only modest interest for the non-British reader. However, learning from the book that the minister for energy of a major Western country was totally incompetent at his job; is not surprising for us, the non-British!

With this book, David Strahan has set on himself a huge challenge: that of a comprehensive treatment of what we call sometimes "peak oil" and that he decided to call "the last oil shock". A daunting task that involves dealing with widely different fields such as geology, economics, politics and energy technology. But Strahan has managed to meet this challenge in full. This book can be considered a primer for people who are new to peak oil, but also old hands will find it worth reading for its useful insights.


Ugo Bardi teaches chemistry at the University of Firenze, Italy. He is the author of two books on crude oil and of many articles on the subject. He is a member of the executive committee of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) and president of the italian chapter of ASPO (ASPO-Italy) [...].

A first class book on Peak Oil
David Strahan's book `The Last Oil Shock' smartly covers the subject of Peak Oil in a way that makes it very educational to newcomers but at the same time sounding fresh and interesting to those well-read on this topic.

Strahan is an award-winning investigative journalist. This is visible throughout with his countless interviews with key insiders in energy, politics and economics, used to highlight and reinforce the arguments laid out. His knowledge and understanding of all aspects of Peak Oil has been fermenting for almost a decade and it is clearly distilled in this book for the reader.

The story is a familiar one. World oil production is expected to peak soon, no alternative forms of energy can replace it sufficiently, we're not preparing for it let alone admitting it, and many of our systems will struggle to cope with the decline of oil, especially our financial, trade and agricultural practices. Spiking oil prices, recessions, depressions, and worldwide struggle follow. But Strahan takes the reader through this with expertise, revealing something new to even old eyes (and I should know, I've read all the books on this!). The words jump into the reader's head; it is a page turner, written often with wit, flourish, insight and sometimes contempt. It is a timely book too, contextualising the story of oil around the current tensions in the Middle-East. I dare say it portrays the real `Real Story' for the invasion of Iraq and the threats now directed towards Iran from an oil hungry USA.

There is plenty to praise about `The Last Oil Shock'. It is not a technical book, but where necessary the data is presented in a comprehendible manner that will not deter the average reader. He masterfully builds the case for concern. However, he also presents and deconstructs the arguments of the Peak Oil deniers and dubious official figures. The reader is left with little doubt that we are staring trouble right in the face. What makes this book even more interesting are the revelations that have not been covered before, such as the extent to which No.10 may really understand Peak Oil, and why.

The likely consequences of Peak Oil are also dealt with, but done so in a way that alarms without appearing to be a goggle-eyed doom-monger. Every argument presented is solid and backed up. Strahan reveals the apocalyptic possibilities without appearing apocalyptic himself. Nor does he limit his analysis to Peak Oil. Climate Change is clearly addressed, and the phrase `Short Fuse, Long Fuse', a title for the chapter dealing with Peak Oil and Climate Change, is apposite for a fundamental difference between the problems. With this he exposes why organisations such as Greenpeace are not pushing the Peak Oil message when in theory it provides extra impetus for climate change mitigation strategies. Is this a book that should be read by people interested in Climate Change? Absolutely.

Some may criticise it for not being technical enough, but that is not the purpose of this book. The `back of the envelope' calculations throughout illustrate the problems perfectly and for the average reader do not need to be more technical.

The book is subtitled `A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man', but this is misleading. It is not entirely a survival guide but more accurately `The Case for the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man.' Equally, the solutions proposed towards the back may be insufficient for some, but this book should inspire people to read further on solutions and mitigation, about which much is now written. I found the policy suggestions to be entirely sensible and the personal action to take also rewarding. After a couple of hundred pages describing how bleak the situation appears, it was pleasing to see Strahan did not leave the readers in total despair. Hope, to some extent, exists.

Previous Peak Oil books will have appealed mainly to those who just wanted to know more about the subject anyway, having perhaps heard about it on the Internet or from a friend first. `The Last Oil Shock' is simply a highly interesting and very readable book in its own right, one that would appeal to almost anyone. It will shock, outrage and inspire the reader.

People need to get hold of this, read it, pass it on and then do something positive with the valuable knowledge they have gained. Strahan produced two documentaries on Peak Oil for the BBC, and we will be well served if this book gets picked up for production and seen by the millions that need to know what is inside this book.

Thorough going journalism
Many of the reviews here have eloquently explained the substance of this book, however I thought I would add that I was impressed by the sheer leg work this journalist must have done over a period of years,in order to have produced the material for this book.It constatly bounces back between America and the UK tracing the developments in this story from many interviews. The book is written from a British perspective.

Looking to the future I found the most chilling piece of news the author brings us is that a map maker (he interviewed) used by the Americans to plot all the oil bearing structures in Iraq (coincidentally just before the Iraq invasion)has recently been commissioned to produce maps of a similar nature of Iran.