The First Half of the Age of Oil

According to the conventional wisdom, we live in a post-industrial information age. This book, however, paints a different picture: We live in the age of oil. Petroleum fuels and feedstocks are responsible for much of what we take for granted in modern society, from chemical products such as fertilizer and plastics, to the energy that moves people and goods in a global economy.  Oil is a nearly perfect fuel: Energy dense, safe to store, easy to transport, and mostly environmentally benign. Most importantly, oil has been cheap and abundant during the past 150 years. In 1998, two respected geologists, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère, published a detailed article announcing that the 'end of cheap oil' would happen before 2010, which meant that the world would face a peak, or at least a plateau, in global daily oil production in the first decade of the new millennium. Today, two billion people under the age of 14 have lived the majority of their lives past the point when this century-long growth in oil supplies came to an end, which also marks the end of the first half of the age of oil. This transition has ushered in a new reality of high oil prices, stagnating oil supplies, and sluggish economies. In this book, a leading authority on energy explores the contributions and continuing legacy of Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère, the two geologists who modified the terms of the debate about oil. The book provides a unique perspective and state-of-the-art overview of today's energy reality and its enormous economic and social implications.
-  Covers a topic that eclipses climate change as the most important but least understood challenge for contemporary society
-  Explores the works of Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère, the leading authorities in the field of Peak Oil, authors of 'The End of Cheap Oil' (Scientific American, 1998), and founding members of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas

-  Addresses a broad audience of scientists, engineers, and economists in a format that is accessible to the general public
-  Provides a complete overview of the basic geological, chemical, physical, economic and historical concepts that every oil consumer should understand
-  Presents the latest information on oil production, reserves, discoveries, prices, and fields in easy-to-understand graphs and plots

Professor Charlie Hall is a systems ecologist with strong interests in energy flows in natural systems and human society. He received his PhD from Dr. Howard Odum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1970. His work has involved streams, estuaries and tropical forests, but has focused increasingly on human-dominated ecosystems in the US and Latin America. He is best known for developing the concept of EROI, or energy return on investment, as it relates to e.g. migrating fish and obtaining oil and gas. Hall's latest focus has been on developing an alternative approach to economics called biophysical economics, an attempt to understand human economies from a biophysical rather than just social perspective. He recently co-authored 'Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy' with economist Kent Klitgaard.
Carlos A. Ramírez-Pascualli is a Ph.D. student in environmental science at the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF), where he is doing research on the biophysical aspects of economic systems, specifically on the relation of oil production to the Mexican economy. He holds degrees from some of the leading institutions in Mexico and Latin America: M.Sc. Economics from El Colegio de México (COLMEX), and B. Sc. Industrial Engineering from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Before entering the Ph.D. program at SUNY-ESF, he was part of the team that developed the main information system at the Federal Competition Commission in Mexico. Previously, he worked as researcher and teaching assistant in several microeconomic courses at COLMEX. In addition to his official degrees, he has studied statistics and enjoys reading as much philosophy as he can.