Crude

by Sonia Shah

  36 Penny Sparke, ed., The Plastics Age: From Modernity to Post-Modernity (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1990), pp. 17-21.

  37 Spitz, Petrochemicals, pp. 246-247.

  38 Ibid., p. xiii.

  39 Sparke, ed., The Plastics Age, p. 50.

  40 Spitz, Petrochemicals, p. 153.

  41 “WWII Wrecks Haunt Pacific Atolls with Toxic Cargoes,” PR Newswire, November 1, 2002.

  42 Yergin, The Prize, pp. 358-361.

  43 Spitz, Petrochemicals, pp. 153-154.

  44 Yergin, The Prize, pp. 395, 400-401.

  45 Klein and Olson, “Taken for a Ride”; Cecilia Rasmussen, “Did Auto, Oil Conspiracy Put the Brakes on Trolleys?” Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2003, p. 4.

  46 Hall et al., Energy and Resource Quality, p. 255.

  47 Paul Raeburn, “The Moth That Failed,” New York Times, August 25, 2002, p. 12.

  48 Pizzichini, “The Big Smoke”; John E. Thornes and Gemma Metherell, “The Big Smoke: One Hundred Years Ago, Thick Smogs Regularly Brought London to a Standstill,” Geographical (September 2002), p. 20.

  49 Freese, Coal, pp. 160-168.

  50 Ibid., p. 144.

  Chapter Two

  1 Molly O’Meara Sheehan, “City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl,” Worldwatch paper 156, June 2001, p. 13.

  2 Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 162.

  3 The Nobel committee commemorated Haber’s achievement despite his disturbing wartime activities. Haber committed himself to the German war effort in 1914. Under his direction, on April 22, 1915, the Germans released 168 tons of chlorine gas on French troops. The greenish-yellow mist smothered ten thousand within ten minutes, and a week later Haber was on his way to the Eastern Front to launch gas attacks there. Just days later, his devastated wife committed suicide. But Haber was unapologetic. To his way of thinking, chemical weapons were no crueler than steel missiles.

  4 Vaclav Smil, Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), pp. xiii-xvii, 113; Reginald H. Garrett and Charles M. Grisham, Biochemistry, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace College, 1999), p. 853.

  5 American Plastics Council, “History of Plastics,” http://www.americanplasticscouncil.org/benefits/about_plastics/history.html.

  6 Penny Sparke, ed., The Plastics Age: From Modernity to Post-Modernity (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1990), p. 31.

  7 Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001) pp. 2-3; Kenneth S. Deffeyes, interview by the author, December 28, 2002.

  8 Dilip Hiro, The Middle East (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996), p. 16.

  9 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 451.

  10 Peter Mansfield, Nasser’s Egypt (Baltimore: Penguin, 1965), pp. 130-131.

  11 Yergin, The Prize, pp. 479 -481.

  12 P. J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (London: Croom Helm, 1978), p. 235.

  13 Yergin, The Prize, pp. 479-480, 497.

  14 Ibid., pp. 521-523.

  15 Energy Information Administration, “Non-OPEC Fact Sheet,” June 2002, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/nonopec.html.

  16 Yergin, The Prize, p. 433.

  17 Energy Information Administration, Table 11.10, “World Petroleum Consumption, 1960-2001 (Million Barrels per Day),” http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb1110.html.

  18 Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak, p. 41.

  19 Matthew R. Simmons, “The World’s Giant Oilfields: How Many Exist? How Much Do They Produce? How Fast Are They Declining?” (Simmons & Company International, December 18, 2001), p. 19.

  20 Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak, p. 16.

  21 Charles F. Conaway, The Petroleum Industry: A Nontechnical Guide (Tulsa, OK: PennWell, 1999), p. 41.

  22 Mark Chapin et al., “Integrated Seismic and Subsurface Characterization of Bonga Field, Offshore Nigeria,” Leading Edge, November 2002, p. 1125.

  23 Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak, p. 7.

  24 H. W. Menard and George Sharman, “Scientific Uses of Random Drilling Models,” Science (October 24, 1975), pp. 337-343.

  25 Yergin, The Prize, p. 219.

  26 Robert Stoneley, An Introduction to Petroleum Exploration for Non-Geologists (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 73-74.

  27 Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak, p. 81.

  28 Yergin, The Prize, p. 576.

  29 National Research Council, Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 3-4.

  30 Yergin, The Prize, pp. 571-573.

  31 William J. Pike, “Reflections on Rough Seas,” Ocean Industry 26, no. 1 (February 1991), p. 15.

  32 Stoneley, An Introduction to Petroleum Exploration for Non-Geologists, p. 103.

  33 Kenneth S. Deffeyes, letter to the author, March 12, 2003.

  34 Proven oil reserves as of January 1, 2003. Energy Information Administration, “Country Analysis Briefs: North Sea,” http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/northsea.html.

  35 Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak, p. 4.

  36 Kenneth S. Deffeyes, interview by the author, December 28, 2002.

  37 Ibid.

  Chapter Three

  1 Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2001 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, November 2002), Table 11.5, p. 287.

  2 Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2002.

  3 Bob Vavra, “1973: The Arab Oil Embargo Transforms the World,” National Petroleum News (November 2000), p. 18.

  4 David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 203-208.

  5 David Brian Robertson, ed., Loss of Confidence: Politics and Policy in the 1970s (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), pp. 1-10.

  6 Fischer, The Great Wave, pp. 203-208; Lizette Alvarez, “Britain Says U.S. Planned to Seize Oil in ’73 Crisis,” New York Times, January 2, 2004, p. 4.

  7 Alan S. Miller, “Energy Policy from Nixon to Clinton: From Grant Provider to Market Facilitator,” Environmental Law 25, no. 3 (1995), pp. 715-731.

  8 Michael Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), p. 59.

  9 Miller, “Energy Policy from Nixon to Clinton.”

  10 Fischer, The Great Wave, pp. 203-208.

  11 Department of Energy, “DOE History,” http://www.oakridge.doe.gov/pmab/restore/History/DOEHistory.htm.

  12 Brian Trumbore, “The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-1974,” http://Stocksand-Newscom /.

  13 Robertson, ed., Loss of Confidence, pp. 1-10.

  14 Klare, Resource Wars, p. 33.

  15 See, for example, Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (Boston, MA: South End, 1999), and http://www.oxfam.org/.

  16 Jeremy Rifkin, The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World-Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth (New York: Tarcher, 2002), pp. 7-8.

  17 Seamus O’Cleireacain, Third World Debt and International Public Policy (New York: Praeger, 1990), p. 3.

  18 Trumbore, “The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973-1974.”

  19 Michael Economides and Ronald Oligney, The Color of Oil: The History, the Money, and the Politics of the World’s Biggest Business (Katy, TX: Round Oak, 2000), p. 3.

  20 National Research Council, Cumulative Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Activities on Alaska’s North Slope (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003), pp. 27-29, 66, 151.

  21 Will Harvie, “On Guard: Ice Patrol Out to Make Sure the Oil Platform Is No Second Titanic,” Oilweek (December 1, 1997), pp. 20-22.

  22 Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2002.

  23 Douglas Martin, “Oil Drillers off Canada Battle Nature and Politics,” New York Times, March 15
, 1981, p. 1.

  24 Economides and Oligney, The Color of Oil, p. 29.

  25 Rhonda Duey, “Stuck at the Starting Gate?” Hart’s E&P, December 2001.

  26 Economides and Oligney, The Color of Oil, p. 31; Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 73-75.

  27 Dan Mueller, quoted in Rick von Flatern and Marshall DeLuca, “Advisory Notes,” Offshore Engineer (April 2003), p. 19.

  28 Martin, “Oil Drillers off Canada Battle Nature and Politics,” p. 1.

  29 Christian Williams, “Drilling Farther, Deeper; Offshore Oil Rigs Breed New Hazards,” Washington Post, October 28, 1994, p. A1.

  30 Christian Williams, “Command Splintered on Sea Rigs,” Washington Post, October 29, 1984, p. A1.

  31 Williams, “Drilling Farther, Deeper,” p. A1.

  32 Don Sutton, “Widow of Oil Rig Victim Tries to Cope with Her Loss,” Toronto Star, September 22, 1994, p. 6.

  33 A. Kevan Parry, “Reflecting on End of Ocean Ranger,” Ottawa Citizen, August 24, 1993, p. A8.

  34 Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 733.

  35 Matthew R. Simmons, “The World’s Giant Oilfields: How Many Exist? How Much Do They Produce? How Fast Are They Declining?” (Simmons & Company International, December 18, 2001), p. 1.

  36 Walter Youngquist, GeoDestinies: The Inevitable Control of Earth Resources over Nations and Individuals (Portland, OR: National, 1997), p. 183.

  37 Simmons, “The World’s Giant Oilfields,” p. 9.

  38 Vavra, “1973.”

  Chapter Four

  1 Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2001 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, November 2002), Table 5.4, p. 133.

  2 Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society, 2003), p. 75.

  3 Alan S. Miller, “Energy Policy from Nixon to Clinton: From Grant Provider to Market Facilitator,” Environmental Law 25, no. 3 (1995).

  4 Ibid.

  5 Michael Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), pp. 64-65.

  6 ExxonMobil, “ExxonMobil Today,” http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/About/History/Corp_A_H_XOMToday.asp; Chevron, “A long affiliation,” http://www.chevron.com/learning_center/history/time/1980-now/pg5.asp.

  7 Matthew R. Simmons, “The World’s Giant Oilfields: How Many Exist? How Much Do They Produce? How Fast Are They Declining?” (Simmons & Company International, December 18, 2001), p. 12.

  8 Michael Economides and Ronald Oligney, The Color of Oil: The History, the Money, and the Politics of the World’s Biggest Business (Katy, TX: Round Oak, 2000), p. 100. Total world GDP = US $31,283,839 million. From World Bank, “Total GDP 2001,” http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/GDP.pdf.

  9 ExxonMobil 2001 Summary Annual Report, “Letter to Shareholders,” and “Long-Term Returns,” http://www.exxonmobil.com/.

  10 See Table 4.

  11 U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics 2004 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 2005), Tables 4-11 and 4-14, 336, 340.

  12 Patricia S. Hu et al., “Summary of Travel Trends: 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey,” U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration; INFORM, “The need for sustainable transportation,” fact sheet, http://www.informinc.org/fact_needsus.php ; U.S. Census Bureau, “U.S. POPClock Projection,” http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock/.

  13 Average time Americans spend with children is 1.3 hours/day. See Table 9, “Average hours per day spent by persons 18 years and over caring for household children under 18 years, by sex of respondent and age of youngest household child, 2004 annual averages,” from Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004 American Time Use Survey Summary. Also Douglas E. Morris, “Transit missteps leave us trapped,” Baltimore Sun, September 29, 2005, 17A.

  14 Idling in traffic burned 506 million gallons in 2000, on average. National Transportation Statistics 2002, Table 4-27.

  15 Molly O’Meara Sheehan, “City Limits: Putting the Brakes on Sprawl,” Worldwatch paper 156, June 2001, pp. 18, 22, 24; Patricia S. Hu, “Americans and Their Vehicles,” Center for Transportation Analysis, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Department of Energy, May 1, 2003.

  16 Thirty thousand Americans die annually from respiratory illnesses directly attributed to toxic emissions from vehicles. See INFORM, “The need for sustainable transportation”; 40,000 Americans die in car crashes. See Partnership for Safe Driving, http://www.crashprevention.org/. More than 5,000 die in truck-related crashes. Ron Bradley et al., “Technology Roadmap for the Twenty-first-Century Truck Program,” p. xv.

  17 Keith Bradsher, High and Mighty: SUVS—The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), pp. 20-27, 267.

  18 Hu, “Americans and Their Vehicles”; Jack Doyle, “The Autocrats: Detroit and the Politics of Pollution,” Earth Island Journal (autumn 2000), p. 36; Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2001 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, November 2002), Table 2.9, p. 61; Environmental Protection Agency, “Light-Duty Automotive Technology and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 Through 2003,” http://www.epa.gov/otaq/fetrends.htm.

  19 Micheline Maynard, “S.U.V.’s stumbled and sedans gained as 2005 focused on fuel,” New York Times, January 5, 2006.

  20 Kozo Mayumi, Mario Giampietro, and John M. Gowdy, “Georgescu-Roegen/ Daly versus Solow/Stiglitz revisited,” Ecological Economics (November 1998); Lee Schipper, “On the Rebound: The Interaction of Energy Efficiency, Energy Use, and Economic Activity,” Energy Policy (June 2000), pp. 351-353.

  21 Annabelle Garay et al., “Phoenix Gasoline Problems Persist As Pipeline Remains Shut Down,” Associated Press, August 18, 2003.

  22 Nick Madigan, “Gasoline Crisis Changes Car Culture of Phoenix,” New York Times, August 24, 2003, p. 16.

  23 International Fertilizer Industry Association, “Nitrogen fertilizer nutrient consumption - Million tonnes N,” October 2004, available at http://www.fertilizer.org/ifa/statistics/indicators/tablen.asp. A single ton of nitrogen fertilizer requires six barrels of oil equivalent. Charles A. S. Hall, Cutler J. Cleveland, and Robert Kaufmann, Energy and Resource Quality: The Ecology off the Economic Process (New York: Wiley, 1986), p. 125.

  24 V. Smil, p. 226.

  25 Brian Halweil, “Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market,” Worldwatch paper 163, November 2002, pp. 6, 9.

  26 Total land area: 9,158,960 sq km. Arable land: 19.32 percent, or 1,769,511 sq. km. 1,769,511 square kilometers = 437,255,691 acres. CIA World Factbook 2002, http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html#Geo; Michael Pollan, “When a Crop Becomes King,” New York Times, July 19, 2002, p. 17.

  27 Pollan, “When a Crop Becomes King,” p. 17.

  28 Emily Matthews et al., The Weight of Nations: Material Outflows from Industrial Economies (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2000), pp. 22-23.

  29 Total petroleum consumption for the industrial sector, 2001 = 4,667,000 barrels /day or 1.7 billion barrels/year out of total consumption of 6.5 billion barrels. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2001 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, November 2002), Table 5.12b, p. 151; Energy Information Administration, “Manufacturing Consumption of Energy 1994,” p. 6.

  30 The following is from an interview of Frank Hewetson by the author, February 2003.

  31 Hall et al., Energy and Resource Quality, pp. 51-53. By 1989, the relation between GNP growth and energy consumption weakened. See Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 1989 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy).

  32 INFORM, “The need for sustainable transportation,” fact sheet, http://www.informinc.org/fact_needsus.php; Hall et al., Energy and Re
source Quality, p. 49.

  33 Rex Tillerson, “Current Sources—A Global View” (London: Institute of Petroleum, February 17, 2003).

  34 Daphne Wysham, “Sustainable Development South and North: Climate Change Policy Coherence in Global Trade and Financial Flows,” Institute for Policy Studies, March 25, 2003; “Project Underground, Drilling to the Ends of the Earth,” http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/motherlode/drilling/frontier.html. .

  35 “Striking a better balance: The World Bank Group and extractive industries,” Final Report of the Extractive Industries Review, Volume 1, October 2003, p. xiii.

  36 Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2003 (Washington, DC: Department of Energy, May 2003), p. 30.

  37 Sheehan, “City Limits,” pp. 16, 61.

  38 BP Annual Report 2002, p. 9.

  39 Sheehan, “City Limits,” p. 17.

  40 Charles W. Petit, “A Smoky Shroud over Asia Blocks Both Sun and Rain,” U.S. News & World Report, March 17, 2003, p. 46.

  41 “EIA Sees Developing Nations As Key to Energy Demand Jump,” Oil & Gas Journal, April 15, 2002, p. 26.

  42 John H. Wood et al., “World Conventional Oil Supply Expected to Peak in Twenty-first Century,” Offshore (April 2003).

  Chapter Five

  1 David Knott, “Britain’s Approach to Petroleum Taxes,” Oil & Gas Journal, January 15, 1996, p. 31.

  2 Energy Information Administration, “Country Analysis Briefs: United Kingdom,” February 2003, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/uk.html.

  3 Deborah Hargreaves, “Sweep of a Dustbin and Brush—North Sea Oil Prospects,” Financial Times, December 18, 1991, p. 28.

  4 “Apache, TotalFinaElf Expand into Uncommon Areas,” Oil & Gas Journal, January 20, 2003, p. 32.

  5 Bill Mongelluzzo, “Alaskan Boom Cools; Tankers Redeployed,” Journal of Commerce , July 12, 1990, p. 1A; Matthew R. Simmons, “The World’s Giant Oilfields: How Many Exist? How Much Do They Produce? How Fast Are They Declining?” (Simmons & Company International, December 18, 2001), p. 25.

  6 Mohammad Al-Gailani, “Iraq’s Significant Hydrocarbon Potential Remains Relatively Undeveloped,” Oil & Gas Journal, July 29, 1996, p. 108.