Download or read book Why We Hate the Oil Companies written by John Hofmeister and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister was known for being a straight shooter, willing to challenge his peers throughout the industry. Now, he's a man on a mission, the founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, crisscrossing the country in a grassroots campaign to change the way we look at energy in this country. While pundits proffer false new promises of green energy independence, or flatly deny the existence of a problem, Hofmeister offers an insider's view of what's behind the energy companies' posturing, and how politicians use energy misinformation, disinformation, and lack of information to get and stay elected. He tackles the energy controversy head-on, without regard for political correctness. He also provides a new framework for solving difficult problems, identifying solutions that will lead to a future of comfortable lifestyles, affordable and clean energy, environmental protection, and sustained economic competitiveness.
Download or read book Why We Hate Oil Companies written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Oil and Finance written by Raymond J. Learsy and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-05-13 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These political essays, which originally appeared in the Huffington Post, chronicle the financial and environment malfeasance of the oil industry during the last five years. Oil is a commodity that is essential to the worlds economic well-being. But it is also an industry rife with corruption. In OIL AND FINANCE, author Raymond J. Learsy chronicles the problems within the oil industry and details how these issues affect both US and global politics. Culled from a collection of essays that first appeared in the Huffington Post throughout the last five years, OIL AND FINANCE provides an illuminating understanding about where weve been and where were headed as a nation with respect to our fossil-fuel consumption, our environment, our financial system, our security, and our place on the global stage. It uncovers the truth behind oil pricingincluding its speculation and manipulation, the politics of oil and its impact on our security, oils influence on our domestic and foreign policies, OPECs success, and the menacing impact of oil on the environment. OIL AND FINANCE presents a real-time account of a nation in crisis. Filled with contemplations and reactions, it is also a call to arms and a battle plan. It communicates how we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil, develop alternative energy sources, stabilize our economy, shore up our national securityand prosper as a people.
Download or read book The Fracking Debate written by Daniel Raimi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-12-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over roughly the past decade, oil and gas production in the United States has surged dramatically—thanks largely to technological advances such as high-volume hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as “fracking.” This rapid increase has generated widespread debate, with proponents touting economic and energy-security benefits and opponents highlighting the environmental and social risks of increased oil and gas production. Despite the heated debate, neither side has a monopoly on the facts. In this book, Daniel Raimi gives a balanced and accessible view of oil and gas development, clearly and thoroughly explaining the key issues surrounding the shale revolution. The Fracking Debate directly addresses the most common questions and concerns associated with fracking: What is fracking? Does fracking pollute the water supply? Will fracking make the United States energy independent? Does fracking cause earthquakes? How is fracking regulated? Is fracking good for the economy? Coupling a deep understanding of the scholarly research with lessons from his travels to every major U.S. oil- and gas-producing region, Raimi highlights stories of the people and communities affected by the shale revolution, for better and for worse. The Fracking Debate provides the evidence and context that have so frequently been missing from the national discussion of the future of oil and gas production, offering readers the tools to make sense of this critical issue.
Download or read book Following Oil written by Thomas A. Petrie and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a forty-year career as an oil and gas investment analyst and as an investment banker and strategic adviser on petroleum-sector mergers, acquisitions, and financings, Thomas A. Petrie has witnessed dramatic changes in the business. In Following Oil, he shares useful lessons he has learned about domestic and global trends in population and economic growth, a maturing resource base, variable national energy policies, and dynamic changes in geopolitical forces—and how these variables affect energy markets. More important, he applies those lessons to charting a course of energy development for the nation as the twenty-first century unfolds. By the 1970s, when Petrie began analyzing publicly traded securities in the energy sector, the petroleum investment market was depressed. The rise of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pushed energy to the center of the national security calculus of the United States and its allies. Price volatility would continue to whipsaw global markets for decades, while for consumers, cheap gasoline prices soon became a fond memory. Eventually, as Petrie puts it, finding oil on Wall Street became cheaper than drilling for it. Petrie uses this dramatic period in oil business history to relate what he has learned from “following oil” as a securities analyst and investment banker. But the title also refers to energy sources that could become available following eventual shrinkage of conventional-oil supplies. Addressing the current need for greener, more sustainable energy sources, Petrie points to recent large domestic gas discoveries and the use of new technologies such as horizontal drilling to unlock unconventional hydrocarbons. With these new sources, the United States can increase production and ensure itself enough oil and gas to sustain economic growth during the next several decades. Petrie urges the pursuit of cleaner fossil fuel development in order to buy the time to develop the technical advances needed to bridge the nation to a greener energy future, when wind, solar, and other technologies advance sufficiently to play a larger role.
Download or read book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels written by Alex Epstein and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could everything we know about fossil fuels be wrong? For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental. If we look at the big picture of fossil fuels compared with the alternatives, the overall impact of using fossil fuels is to make the world a far better place. We are morally obligated to use more fossil fuels for the sake of our economy and our environment. Drawing on original insights and cutting-edge research, Epstein argues that most of what we hear about fossil fuels is a myth. For instance . . . Myth: Fossil fuels are dirty. Truth: The environmental benefits of using fossil fuels far outweigh the risks. Fossil fuels don’t take a naturally clean environment and make it dirty; they take a naturally dirty environment and make it clean. They don’t take a naturally safe climate and make it dangerous; they take a naturally dangerous climate and make it ever safer. Myth: Fossil fuels are unsustainable, so we should strive to use “renewable” solar and wind. Truth: The sun and wind are intermittent, unreliable fuels that always need backup from a reliable source of energy—usually fossil fuels. There are huge amounts of fossil fuels left, and we have plenty of time to find something cheaper. Myth: Fossil fuels are hurting the developing world. Truth: Fossil fuels are the key to improving the quality of life for billions of people in the developing world. If we withhold them, access to clean water plummets, critical medical machines like incubators become impossible to operate, and life expectancy drops significantly. Calls to “get off fossil fuels” are calls to degrade the lives of innocent people who merely want the same opportunities we enjoy in the West. Taking everything into account, including the facts about climate change, Epstein argues that “fossil fuels are easy to misunderstand and demonize, but they are absolutely good to use. And they absolutely need to be championed. . . . Mankind’s use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous—because human life is the standard of value and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life.”
Download or read book The History of the Standard Oil Company written by Ida Minerva Tarbell and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the busiest corners of the globe at the opening of the year 1872 was a strip of Northwestern Pennsylvania, not over fifty miles long, known the world over as the Oil Regions. Twelve years before this strip of land had been but little better than a wilderness; its chief inhabitants the lumbermen, who every season cut great swaths of primeval pine and hemlock from its hills, and in the spring floated them down the Allegheny River to Pittsburg. The great tides of Western emigration had shunned the spot for years as too rugged and unfriendly for settlement, and yet in twelve years this region avoided by men had been transformed into a bustling trade centre, where towns elbowed each other for place, into which three great trunk railroads had built branches, and every foot of whose soil was fought for by capitalists. It was the discovery and development of a new raw product, petroleum, which had made this change from wilderness to market-place. This product in twelve years had not only peopled a waste place of the earth, it had revolutionised the world’s methods of illumination and added millions upon millions of dollars to the wealth of the United States. Petroleum as a curiosity, and indeed in a small way as an article of commerce, was no new thing when its discovery in quantities called the attention of the world to this corner of Northwestern Pennsylvania. The journals of many an early explorer of the valleys of the Allegheny and its tributaries tell of springs and streams the surfaces of which were found covered with a thick oily substance which burned fiercely when ignited and which the Indians believed to have curative properties. As the country was opened, more and more was heard of these oil springs. Certain streams came to be named from the quantities of the substance found on the surface of the water, as “Oil Creek” in Northwestern Pennsylvania, “Old Greasy” or Kanawha in West Virginia. The belief in the substance as a cure-all increased as time went on and in various parts of the country it was regularly skimmed from the surface of the water as cream from a pan, or soaked up by woollen blankets, bottled, and peddled as a medicine for man and beast. Up to the beginning of the 19th century no oil seems to have been obtained except from the surfaces of springs and streams. That it was to be found far below the surface of the earth was discovered independently at various points in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania by persons drilling for salt-water to be used in manufacturing salt. Not infrequently the water they found was mixed with a dark-green, evil-smelling substance which was recognised as identical with the well-known “rock-oil.” It was necessary to rid the water of this before it could be used for salt, and in many places cisterns were devised in which the brine was allowed to stand until the oil had risen to the surface. It was then run into the streams or on the ground. This practice was soon discovered to be dangerous, so easily did the oil ignite. In several places, particularly in Kentucky, so much oil was obtained with the salt-water that the wells had to be abandoned. Certain of these deserted salt wells were opened years after, when it was found that the troublesome substance which had made them useless was far more valuable than the brine the original drillers sought.
Download or read book Oil 101 written by Morgan Downey and published by WOODEN TABLE PressLLC. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since 1859, oil has enabled and defined our economic, social and political landscape. Throughout this time, abundant supply ensured low, stable prices and the inner workings of the oil industry remained relatively obscure. Following a century and a half of relative calm, oil prices have become much more volatile as the sustainability and growth of reliable supply sources have been brought into question. This book provides a guide to oil; from its history, to sources of supply and drivers of demand; from how prices are determined daily in global wholesale oil markets, to how those markets are connected to prices at the pump." -- Book jacket.
Download or read book The Tyranny of Oil written by Antonia Juhasz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-09-24 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Juhasz bravely and expertly exposes the inner workings of an industry and a government riddled with secrets, lies, and deception.” —Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers In the tradition of the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Antonia Juhasz’s The Tyranny of Oil offers a chilling exposé of the modern American oil industry and its dire abuse of power. A leading international trade and finance policy expert and the author of The Bush Agenda, Juhasz presents eye-opening truths about a potentially catastrophic global energy crisis that only promises to get much worse in the coming years—and provides possible solutions for meaningful change. Terry Tamminen, former Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, calls The Tyranny of Oil “a bold blueprint for ending the madness,” and the Christian Science Monitor tells us, “a good first step toward true energy independence is to read this insightful book.”
Download or read book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man written by John Perkins and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2004-11-09 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.
Download or read book The Peak Oil Scare and the Coming Oil Flood written by Michael C. Lynch and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-07-25 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is the earth's oil supply starting to run out, or is there far more oil than some experts believe? This book points out flaws in the research used to warn of an oil shortfall and predicts that large new reserves of oil are soon to be tapped. In the last decade, oil experts, geologists, and policy makers alike have warned that a peak in oil production around the world was about to be reached and that global economic distress would result when this occurred. But it didn't happen. The "Peak Oil" Scare and the Coming Oil Flood refutes the recent claims that world oil production is nearing a peak and threatening economic disaster by analyzing the methods used by the theory's proponents. Author Michael C. Lynch, former researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), debunks the "Peak Oil" crisis prediction and describes how the next few years will instead see large amounts of new supply that will bring oil prices down and boost the global economy. This book will be invaluable to those involved in the energy industry, including among those fields that are competing with oil, as well as financial institutions for which the price of oil is of critical importance. Lynch uncovers the facts behind the misleading news stories and media coverage on oil production as well as the analytic process that reveals the truth about the global oil supply. General readers will be dismayed to learn how governments have frequently been led astray by seeming logical theories that prove to have no sound basis and will come away with a healthy sense of skepticism about popular economics.
Download or read book In Too Deep written by Stanley Reed and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The truth behind the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history In 2005, fifteen workers were killed when BP's Texas City Refinery exploded. In 2006, corroded pipes owned by BP led to an oil spill in Alaska. Now, in 2010, eleven men drilling for BP were killed in the blowout of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. What's next? In In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race That Took it Down, Stanley Reed?a journalist who has covered BP for over a decade?and investigative reporter Alison Fitzgerald answer not only that question, but also examine why these disasters happen to BP so much more than other large oil companies. Places the blame on a corporate culture created by former BP CEO John Browne who was forced to resign in 2007 after he lied in court documents in a case involving his gay lover Details a BP built on risk-taking and cost-cutting Examines the past, present, and future of BP In August 2010, BP successfully "killed" the company's damaged deepwater well. But, the environmental fallout and public relations campaign to rebuild the brand are just beginning. In Too Deep details why BP, why now, and what's next for this oil giant.
Download or read book Capital Formation and Industrial Policy The impact of energy written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Energy and Commerce. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fracking 101 written by Eric George and published by XinXii. This book was released on 2016-04-24 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing to give its proper name, has become part of our lives recently, due to the massive exploitation of America’s shale oil and gas fields. Along the way it has stirred up controversy, with passionate opponents fighting against the oil companies. The fight has generated a lot of heat, but not much understanding. This guide, written by some-one who knows what he is talking about takes a detached, neutral view of the subject. Without pushing a view for or against, it provides the factual background you need to form an opinion of your own. An Informed and Neutral Introduction Like most people I have heard of fracking, but did I really understand what it was? To answer honestly, no. I knew it had something to do with mining and was perhaps destructive to the land. To me, it was just one of those words of the moment. This guide has given me a real sense and understanding of what fracking is. It allowed me, someone who has no experience in this field, to learn about the pros and cons of fracking, without having the good and bad of it forced down my throat. If you want an informed and neutral introduction into fracking, then this is the guide for you. ~ Debbie Prewer
Download or read book The Big Flatline written by Jeff Rubin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an urgent follow-up to his best-selling Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, Jeff Rubin argues that the end of cheap oil means the end of growth. What it will be like to live in a world where growth is over? Economist and resource analyst Jeff Rubin is certain that the world's governments are getting it wrong. Instead of moving us toward economic recovery, the measures being taken around the globe right now are digging us into a deeper hole. Both politicians and economists are missing the fact that the real engine of economic growth has always been cheap, abundant fuel and resources. But that era is over. The end of cheap oil, Rubin argues, signals the end of growth--and the end of easy answers to renewing prosperity. With China and India sucking up the lion's share of the world's ever more limited resources, the rest of us will have to make do with less. But is this all bad? Rubin points out that there is no research to show that people living in countries with hard-charging economies are happier, and plenty of research to show that some of the most contented people on the planet live in places with no growth or slow growth. But bad or good, it's the new reality, and Rubin reveals how our day-to-day lives will be drastically changed.
Download or read book Ending the Fossil Fuel Era written by Thomas Princen and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative call for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, accompanied by case studies from Ecuador to Appalachia and from Germany to Norway. Not so long ago, people North and South had little reason to believe that wealth from oil, gas, and coal brought anything but great prosperity. But the presumption of net benefits from fossil fuels is eroding as widening circles of people rich and poor experience the downside. A positive transition to a post-fossil fuel era cannot wait for global agreement, a swap-in of renewables, a miracle technology, a carbon market, or lifestyle change. This book shows that it is now possible to take the first step toward the post-fossil fuel era, by resisting the slow violence of extreme extraction and combustion, exiting the industry, and imagining a good life after fossil fuels. It shows how an environmental politics of transition might occur, arguing for going to the source rather than managing byproducts, for delegitimizing fossil fuels rather than accommodating them, for engaging a politics of deliberately choosing a post-fossil fuel world. Six case studies reveal how individuals, groups, communities, and an entire country have taken first steps out of the fossil fuel era, with experiments that range from leaving oil under the Amazon to ending mountaintop removal in Appalachia.
Download or read book Big Copyright Versus the People written by Martin Skladany and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-07 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the idea of copyright was enshrined in the Constitution it was intended to induce citizens to create. Today, however, copyright has morphed into a system that offers the bulk of its protection to a select number of major corporate content providers (or Big Copyright), which has turned us from a country of creators into one of consumers who spend, on average, ten hours each day on entertainment. In this alarming but illuminating book, Martin Skladany examines our culture of overconsumption and shows not only how it leads to addiction, but also how it is unraveling important threads - of family, friendship, and community - in our society. Big Copyright versus the People should be read by anyone interested in understanding how Big Copyright managed to get such a lethal grip on our culture and what can be done to loosen it.
