The Battle For Barrels: Peak Oil Myths & World Oil Futures

Duncan Clarke

Publisher: Profile Books. Available Now: January 2007. Hardback 244 pages
Orders: Complete Order Form and Fax to: 0031-70.324.1741

The world’s oil future will be wholly at odds with Peak Oil’s ultra-pessimistic scenarios due to global upstream realities and industry fundamentals that will determine most-likely crude oil supply trajectories. Peak Oil’s dismal views contrast with commercial drivers to exploit large world resource endowment, consistent reserve growth, new oil field developments en route, and exploration dynamics that together will shape future crude oil supply growth.

The Book decodes concepts inside and around Peak Oil’s foundations and the alleged truths asserted by these new conventional wisdoms. It disputes the excessive claims of future diminishing world oil patrimony and aggravated views of near-term oil and energy crises.

Peak Oil’s pessimistic geotechnical paradigms are at odds with most industry views. Their rejection of the discipline and findings of Economics is a cardinal weakness that leaves unaccounted both the economic and geopolitical forces that drive key decisions of oil reserves, exploration, development and production. As a result the explicit, implied, and heavily-dramatised post-peak socioeconomic, political and human dramas that some forecast with unbridled certainty for the early 21st Century, are false images for the near-term world oil future. In a nutshell, the world is not up the proverbial creek without the necessary paddle.

Much of the public is unaware of these fatal weaknesses. This has allowed Peak Oil to capture public relations high-ground in global debate. The Battle For Barrels provides fresh, comprehensive and seasoned analytical insights, with polemical reflections on the Peak Oil debates (including on its architects, adherents, allies, activists, and even critics), to counterpoint these alarmist ideas..

The book deconstructs the Peak Oil model and its pre-ordained determinism, explaining why its morbid outlook on reserves and discovery potential does not reflect a world terrain still much unexplored and under-exploited. The real circumstances and complexities that shape the present and likely oil future are elaborated, with new insights on the world oil game. Hence the global angst aroused by Peak Oil, the passions evoked, plus the apocalyptic meanings held by its diverse constituencies, can be seen as excessive and built on shallow foundations. There is no “skeleton in the oil kitchen”, such that human ingenuity and imagination cannot resolve future dilemmas. The divergence between Peak Oil Theory and the real oil word is stark. The essential crisis inside Peak Oil reflects a condition alike some Twilight In The Mind.

Endorsements: The Battle For Barrels

"This book effectively undermines the validity of the theory of Peak Oil and comprehensively demolishes the arguments of its proponents. It is a "must read" antidote to the gloom and doom conclusions of oil scarcity".

Peter R. Odell, Professor Emeritus, International Energy Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam (Author, Why Carbon Fuels Will Dominate The 21st Century’s Global Energy Economy)

“This is a serious work that serious readers should read, and Duncan Clarke offers a smart and insightful survey of one of the most intriguing issues of our times - Is the world running out of oil ? – explaining why doomsayers are wrong. He diagnoses the psychological mindset, the historical mistakes, and the current complexities concerning the evaluation of how much oil lies beneath, and shows a positive view of our energy future.

Leonardo Maugeri, Senior Vice President, Eni SpA. (Author, The Age of Oil: the Mythology, History, and Future of the World’s Most Controversial Resource)

Peak Oil has caught global attention because the media love catastrophic news. Duncan Clarke, who has had close contact with top oil industry leaders and its best experts over three decades, has demystified this dogma and shown the crude realities. Clarke demonstrates convincingly that the world's recoverable reserves, eventually limited but more extensive than generally perceived, will be shaped not only by geology but by future strategies, long-term oil prices, new technologies, dynamic markets and shifting geopolitical access.

André Coajou, former Senior Executive, Elf Aquitaine (Exploration, New Ventures, Negotiations)

“Duncan Clarke provides a brilliant insight into the world upstream, peak oil, international corporate strategies, geopolitics, business, economics and technology. His unique worldwide experience provides an astute analysis of critical issues that clarify and interpret the historical future of oil and the modern world in the 21st Century".

Dr. Alfred J. Boulos, former Senior Director, International, Conoco Inc., former President, Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, and European Petroleum Negotiators Group

“This book portrays an independent mind and Duncan Clarke's analysis and interesting opinions shed much light. Few things are trickier than reserve estimates. We had the rule: “You will never know the reserves of a field, before it is depleted…and even then.” What about reserves of not yet discovered fields? Gerry Dixon, former President of Petroconsultants always said: “if we badly need it, we will find it”. Clarke's optimism on the world is justified. One day oil may be depleted, unless humanity does not need it before.”

Christian Suter, CEO Petroconsultants, 1987-1998, and Member of The Board 1968-1999

"The Battle For Barrels lucidly shows that not all is known on potential oil reserves-in-ground, and Peak Oil is very wrong on its view that such reserves are now fully known and finite. Clarke credibly demonstrates that there is much conventional oil to-be-discovered while economics and above-ground factors such as global access and resource nationalism, plus technologies, will shape real oil world futures in ways unlike Peak Oil theorists presume, especially given the Earth’s vast oil endowment”.

Fred Dekker, Managing Director, Wessex Exploration, and former Vice President, Asia Pacific New Ventures, Unocal Corporation

"The Battle for Barrels is a first-class treatise on the myriad of ideas and “almost theories” on the end of oil and its impacts on our society. It separates facts from sensationalism, analyses all relevant ideas, provides rationale to our understanding, and makes a brilliant contribution to the field of energy economics.

Professor Edmar de Almeida, Instituto de Economia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro