Historical Dictionary of the Petroleum Industry


Book Description

The petroleum industry is unique: it is an industry without which modern civilization would collapse. Despite the advances in alternative energy, petroleum’s role is still central. Petroleum still drives economics, geopolitics, and sometimes war. The history of petroleum is, to some measure, the history of the modern world. This book represents a concise but complete one-volume reference on the history of the petroleum industry from pre-modern times to the present day, covering all aspects of business, technology, and geopolitics. The book also presents an analysis of the future of petroleum, and a highly useful set of statistical graphs. Anyone interested in the history, status, and outlook for petroleum will find this book a uniquely valuable first place to look. This new second edition incorporates all the revolutionary changes in the petroleum landscape since the first edition was published, including the boom in extraction of oil and gas from shale formations using techniques such as fracking and horizontal drilling. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Petroleum Industry contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on companies, people, events, technologies, countries, provinces, cities, and regions related to the history of the world’s petroleum industry. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the petroleum industry.







Crude Reality


Book Description

This concise, accessible introduction to the history of oil tells the story of how petroleum has shaped human life since it was first discovered oozing inconspicuously from the soil. For a century, human dependence on petroleum caused little discomfort as we enjoyed the heyday of cheap crude—a glorious episode of energy gluttony that was destined to end. Today, we see the disastrous results in environmental degradation, political instability, and world economic disparity in the waning years of a petroleum-powered civilization—lessons rooted in the finite nature of oil. Considering the nature of oil itself as well as humans’ remarkable relationship with it, Brian C. Black spotlights our modern conundrum and then explores the challenges of our future without oil. It is this essential context, he argues, that will prepare us for our energy transition. Bringing his global perspective and wide-ranging technical knowledge, Black has written an essential contribution to environmental history and the rapidly emerging field of energy history in this sweeping, forward-looking survey.




Fuels to Drive Our Future


Book Description

The American love affair with the automobile is powered by gasoline and diesel fuel, both produced from petroleum. But experts are turning more of their attention to alternative sources of liquid transportation fuels, as concerns mount about U.S. dependence on foreign oil, falling domestic oil production, and the environment. This book explores the potential for producing liquid transportation fuels by enhanced oil recovery from existing reservoirs, and processing resources such as coal, oil shale, tar sands, natural gas, and other promising approaches. Fuels to Drive Our Future draws together relevant geological, technical, economic, and environmental factors and recommends specific directions for U.S. research and development efforts on alternative fuel sources. Of special interest is the book's benchmark cost analysis comparing several major alternative fuel production processes. This volume will be of special interest to executives and engineers in the automotive and fuel industries, policymakers, environmental and alternative fuel specialists, energy economists, and researchers.







Project Finance for the International Petroleum Industry


Book Description

This overview of project finance for the oil and gas industry covers financial markets, sources and providers of finance, financial structures, and capital raising processes. About US$300 billion of project finance debt is raised annually across several capital intensive sectors—including oil and gas, energy, infrastructure, and mining—and the oil and gas industry represents around 30% of the global project finance market. With over 25 year's project finance experience in international banking and industry, author Robert Clews explores project finance techniques and their effectiveness in the petroleum industry. He highlights the petroleum industry players, risks, economics, and commercial/legal arrangements. With petroleum industry projects representing amongst the largest industrial activities in the world, this book ties together concepts and tools through real examples and aims to ensure that project finance will continue to play a central role in bringing together investors and lenders to finance these ventures. - Combines the theory and practice of raising long-term funding for capital intensive projects with insights about the appeal of project finance to the international oil and gas industry - Includes case studies and examples covering projects in the Arctic, East Africa, Latin America, North America, and Australia - Emphasizes the full downstream value chain of the industry instead of limiting itself to upstream and pipeline project financing - Highlights petroleum industry players, risks, economics, and commercial and legal arrangements