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Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future
from back cover:
"Snake Oil casts a critical eye on the oil-industry hype that has hijacked America's enrgy conversation. This is the first book to look at fracking from both economic and environmental perspectives."
"Snake Oil casts a critical eye on the oil-industry hype that has hijacked America's enrgy conversation. This is the first book to look at fracking from both economic and environmental perspectives."
151 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2013
14 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
Richard Heinberg
50 books95 followersRichard William Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 31, 2013
great new book on fracking that came out this week. was a great antidote to what i read in the mainstream press! how great to hear the latest from an expert like Richard Heinberg about fracking. and few people talk about how simply the economic aspects of fracking make it a lose/lose proposition. No one else discusses how simply the damage to highways done by the trucks involved and hauling all that fracking equipment out weighs most of the benefits to the state that allows fracking.
excellent book and boy it sure is timely! i've read every Richard heinberg book and this is as thoughtfully written as the rest of them...
excellent book and boy it sure is timely! i've read every Richard heinberg book and this is as thoughtfully written as the rest of them...
March 24, 2015
When a dark and furious storm is racing in, and the tornado sirens are howling, smart folks stop staring at their cell phones, and head for shelter. But what if the cell phones were streaming messages that the storm warnings were a hoax, and there was nothing to fear? Twenty years ago, Peak Oil was a ridiculous absurdity conjured up by notorious idiots on the lunatic fringe. Ten years ago, it had become an acceptable topic for polite conversation. Today, an extremely effective disinformation campaign has inspired many to toss their energy concerns out the window.
This made Richard Heinberg hopping mad, so he wrote Snake Oil to set the record straight. He’s been blasting the warning sirens for more than ten years, via a series of books. Nobody sane disputes that fossil energy is finite and non-renewable. Nobody sane disputes that our current path has an expiration date. The argument is over when that date arrives. For most folks, something that may become a problem 50 to 100 years from now is simply not worth thinking about. Heinberg is getting strong whiffs of trouble right now.
The production of conventional oil and gas is close to peak, but new technology has enabled production of unconventional oil and gas. We are now extracting oil and gas from shale. We’re cooking oil out of tar sands bitumen. We are drilling in deep waters offshore. This energy is far more expensive to produce.
Today, for each barrel of new oil we discover, we consume four or five barrels pumped from elderly fields. In 1930, oil was as cheap as four cents per barrel. In 2002, a barrel of oil cost $25, and in 2012 it was $110 (with a $150 spike in 2008). Deepwater drilling is economically possible when the price is $90 or more. Existing tar sands projects can continue production at $60, but new tar sands projects need at least $80. Almost all drilling requires $70. The era of cheap energy is over.
A hundred years ago, drilling in ideal locations led to mighty gushers of black gold. It only took one unit of energy to extract 100 units of energy. So, the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) was 100:1. By 1990, the EROEI of U.S. oil production had fallen to 40:1. In 2013, it was about 10:1. Tar sands, oil shale, and biofuels are all less than 5:1, and at this level, the economy gets dizzy, wobbly, and sweaty.
Every gold rush produces a few winners and legions of losers. In order to drum up the necessary investment funding, it is customary to make highly exaggerated estimates of the immense wealth just waiting to be reeled in by wise guys (like you). I recall industry hucksters once proclaimed that the Caspian Sea province contained up to 400 billion barrels of oil. By 2001, after ten years of intensive work on prime sites, far less than 20 billion barrels were produced, according to petroleum geologist Colin Campbell.
Everyone agrees that the production of unconventional oil and gas has delayed our blind date with disaster a bit. Is this delay years, decades, or centuries? Heinberg introduces us to petroleum geologists who believe that U.S. gas and oil production will begin its decline by 2020. “Production from shale gas wells typically declines 80 to 95 percent in the first 36 months of operation. Given steep shale gas well decline rates and low recovery efficiency, the United States may actually have fewer than 10 years of shale gas supply at the current rate of consumption.” In the North Dakota oil fields, 1,400 new wells have to be drilled every year, just to maintain current production, according to a story in Financial Times (27 Aug 2014).
Today, everyone has spent their entire lives in an era of rising energy production and economic growth, just like our parents did. But economic growth is getting dodgy. It’s being kept on life support by skyrocketing levels of debt. As energy production approaches its decline phase, prices are sure to rise. There will come a day when economic growth goes extinct. Without economic growth, our way of life will eventually become a hilarious story told by the campfires of our descendants.
Should we be making serious plans for the coming challenges? “Heck no,” says the energy industry. Our treasure of unconventional energy is the equivalent of two Saudi Arabias! We now have a 100-year supply of gas, according Daniel Yergin. T. Boone Pickens says 160 years. Aubrey McClendon says 200 years. Even 100 years is daffy. How was it calculated? “Simply by taking the highest imaginable resource estimate for each play, then taking the very best imaginable recovery rate, then adding up the numbers.” This results in projections that have no relationship to reality.
The Bakken and Eagle Ford deposits produce more than 80 percent of U.S. tight oil. David Hughes, author of Drill, Baby, Drill, estimated that the combined production of both deposits will end up being the equivalent of ten months of U.S. consumption. The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) estimated that Bakken contains 3.65 billion barrels of recoverable oil — about six weeks of current global consumption. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) predicted that Bakken oil will peak in 2017.
Tim Morgan is a consultant who does a lot of work for investment bankers. In his eye-opening 2013 report, Perfect Storm, he concluded, “the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries, will cease to be viable at some point within the next ten or so years unless, of course, some way is found to reverse the trend.”
Heinberg recommends that we shift to renewable energy with utmost speed. Hmmm. Solar panels and wind turbines have a limited lifespan. Using them, repairing them, and replacing them requires the existence of an extremely unsustainable industrial civilization. This civilization is unlikely to last long as it gets strangled by energy shortages and hammered by social unrest. We’ll be forced to make a painful transition to muscle-powered agriculture, which cannot feed seven billion. Somewhere along the line, televisions, laptops, and refrigerators will become useless ballast. Even if scientists invented a way to extract affordable energy for another 200 years, it would be a foolish thing to do. We’ve burned far too much carbon already.
I wonder if it might be more useful to voyage into the realm of unconventional thinking, on a sacred mission to explore a lot of big questions. Over and over, we are told that cool people work really hard, become really prosperous, and buy lots of really cool stuff. To me, that sounds like a tragic waste of the precious gift of life. It’s causing lots of irreparable damage for no good reason. We weren’t born to live like this. We were born for a life of freedom, to enjoy a normal and natural standard of living. Imagine that.
The book is short, full of helpful charts and graphs, well documented, and delightfully easy to read and understand.
This made Richard Heinberg hopping mad, so he wrote Snake Oil to set the record straight. He’s been blasting the warning sirens for more than ten years, via a series of books. Nobody sane disputes that fossil energy is finite and non-renewable. Nobody sane disputes that our current path has an expiration date. The argument is over when that date arrives. For most folks, something that may become a problem 50 to 100 years from now is simply not worth thinking about. Heinberg is getting strong whiffs of trouble right now.
The production of conventional oil and gas is close to peak, but new technology has enabled production of unconventional oil and gas. We are now extracting oil and gas from shale. We’re cooking oil out of tar sands bitumen. We are drilling in deep waters offshore. This energy is far more expensive to produce.
Today, for each barrel of new oil we discover, we consume four or five barrels pumped from elderly fields. In 1930, oil was as cheap as four cents per barrel. In 2002, a barrel of oil cost $25, and in 2012 it was $110 (with a $150 spike in 2008). Deepwater drilling is economically possible when the price is $90 or more. Existing tar sands projects can continue production at $60, but new tar sands projects need at least $80. Almost all drilling requires $70. The era of cheap energy is over.
A hundred years ago, drilling in ideal locations led to mighty gushers of black gold. It only took one unit of energy to extract 100 units of energy. So, the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) was 100:1. By 1990, the EROEI of U.S. oil production had fallen to 40:1. In 2013, it was about 10:1. Tar sands, oil shale, and biofuels are all less than 5:1, and at this level, the economy gets dizzy, wobbly, and sweaty.
Every gold rush produces a few winners and legions of losers. In order to drum up the necessary investment funding, it is customary to make highly exaggerated estimates of the immense wealth just waiting to be reeled in by wise guys (like you). I recall industry hucksters once proclaimed that the Caspian Sea province contained up to 400 billion barrels of oil. By 2001, after ten years of intensive work on prime sites, far less than 20 billion barrels were produced, according to petroleum geologist Colin Campbell.
Everyone agrees that the production of unconventional oil and gas has delayed our blind date with disaster a bit. Is this delay years, decades, or centuries? Heinberg introduces us to petroleum geologists who believe that U.S. gas and oil production will begin its decline by 2020. “Production from shale gas wells typically declines 80 to 95 percent in the first 36 months of operation. Given steep shale gas well decline rates and low recovery efficiency, the United States may actually have fewer than 10 years of shale gas supply at the current rate of consumption.” In the North Dakota oil fields, 1,400 new wells have to be drilled every year, just to maintain current production, according to a story in Financial Times (27 Aug 2014).
Today, everyone has spent their entire lives in an era of rising energy production and economic growth, just like our parents did. But economic growth is getting dodgy. It’s being kept on life support by skyrocketing levels of debt. As energy production approaches its decline phase, prices are sure to rise. There will come a day when economic growth goes extinct. Without economic growth, our way of life will eventually become a hilarious story told by the campfires of our descendants.
Should we be making serious plans for the coming challenges? “Heck no,” says the energy industry. Our treasure of unconventional energy is the equivalent of two Saudi Arabias! We now have a 100-year supply of gas, according Daniel Yergin. T. Boone Pickens says 160 years. Aubrey McClendon says 200 years. Even 100 years is daffy. How was it calculated? “Simply by taking the highest imaginable resource estimate for each play, then taking the very best imaginable recovery rate, then adding up the numbers.” This results in projections that have no relationship to reality.
The Bakken and Eagle Ford deposits produce more than 80 percent of U.S. tight oil. David Hughes, author of Drill, Baby, Drill, estimated that the combined production of both deposits will end up being the equivalent of ten months of U.S. consumption. The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) estimated that Bakken contains 3.65 billion barrels of recoverable oil — about six weeks of current global consumption. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) predicted that Bakken oil will peak in 2017.
Tim Morgan is a consultant who does a lot of work for investment bankers. In his eye-opening 2013 report, Perfect Storm, he concluded, “the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries, will cease to be viable at some point within the next ten or so years unless, of course, some way is found to reverse the trend.”
Heinberg recommends that we shift to renewable energy with utmost speed. Hmmm. Solar panels and wind turbines have a limited lifespan. Using them, repairing them, and replacing them requires the existence of an extremely unsustainable industrial civilization. This civilization is unlikely to last long as it gets strangled by energy shortages and hammered by social unrest. We’ll be forced to make a painful transition to muscle-powered agriculture, which cannot feed seven billion. Somewhere along the line, televisions, laptops, and refrigerators will become useless ballast. Even if scientists invented a way to extract affordable energy for another 200 years, it would be a foolish thing to do. We’ve burned far too much carbon already.
I wonder if it might be more useful to voyage into the realm of unconventional thinking, on a sacred mission to explore a lot of big questions. Over and over, we are told that cool people work really hard, become really prosperous, and buy lots of really cool stuff. To me, that sounds like a tragic waste of the precious gift of life. It’s causing lots of irreparable damage for no good reason. We weren’t born to live like this. We were born for a life of freedom, to enjoy a normal and natural standard of living. Imagine that.
The book is short, full of helpful charts and graphs, well documented, and delightfully easy to read and understand.
June 1, 2014
This short book is thus an extremely important and very readable book for anti-fracking activists. While it concentrates on the US experience, it is possible to utilise many of the facts and figures for to argue against fracking in the UK. It also raises a number of other questions.
Heinberg argues strongly that we need a switch to renewable energy showing it is technologically possible. Unfortunately, as Heinberg knows, governments around the world as less than enthusiastic for the transition. While part of the problem is, as Heinberg says, that some have been seduced by the idea of large quantities of shale gas as a transition fuel to a low carbon future, the biggest problem is a system that is structured around a fossil fuel economy and the interests of the oil companies.
As Heinberg says
"the US is failing to plan for a future in which hydrocarbons are more scarce and expensive; failing to invest sufficiently in renewable sources of energy, and in low-energy infrastructure such as electric light rail; and failing generally to do what every nation must in order to survive in a century of rapidly destabilising climate - which is to reduce dependency on fossil fuels as quickly as possible."
Full review: Full Review
Heinberg argues strongly that we need a switch to renewable energy showing it is technologically possible. Unfortunately, as Heinberg knows, governments around the world as less than enthusiastic for the transition. While part of the problem is, as Heinberg says, that some have been seduced by the idea of large quantities of shale gas as a transition fuel to a low carbon future, the biggest problem is a system that is structured around a fossil fuel economy and the interests of the oil companies.
As Heinberg says
"the US is failing to plan for a future in which hydrocarbons are more scarce and expensive; failing to invest sufficiently in renewable sources of energy, and in low-energy infrastructure such as electric light rail; and failing generally to do what every nation must in order to survive in a century of rapidly destabilising climate - which is to reduce dependency on fossil fuels as quickly as possible."
Full review: Full Review
April 29, 2014
Very interesting and I was able to use it multiple times for class papers.
December 19, 2013
Richard Heinberg has a great talent for exploring complex energy issues and making it clear to a non-expert reader. I highly recommend this book.
March 11, 2020
An excellent book with concise summaries of the various issues. Since this was written in 2014, I am now reading Bethany McLean's 2018 "Saudi America," with plans to compare the two.
Heinberg is passionate and obviously knowledgeable on the subject matter. It's worth noting that he's a journalist, and I don't see any indication that he has direct insider experience in the industry, which is a bit worrisome given the track record of journalism in general to accurately understand the nuances of industries from a strictly outsider perspective. However, given this largely focuses on macro issues and externalities, it appears to be more fair bounds.
I respect that he takes criticisms head on and admits when things do not fully align with his view. The work is technical in several scopes but not overly so for the layperson.
My only criticism is the devotion of only a single page to passingly mentioning nuclear after going to Herculean lengths about the myriad challenges ahead of wind & solar to make them ubiquitous, economical, and practical. Nuclear is dismissed as "just too expensive in capital investment" with a reference to an article in the Economist that he agrees with. If I thought this book were about the alternatives more than the pitfalls of the hydrocarbon industry itself, this would be a pretty unforgivable oversight for me if you intend to be seen as approaching alternatives seriously and honestly.
Heinberg is passionate and obviously knowledgeable on the subject matter. It's worth noting that he's a journalist, and I don't see any indication that he has direct insider experience in the industry, which is a bit worrisome given the track record of journalism in general to accurately understand the nuances of industries from a strictly outsider perspective. However, given this largely focuses on macro issues and externalities, it appears to be more fair bounds.
I respect that he takes criticisms head on and admits when things do not fully align with his view. The work is technical in several scopes but not overly so for the layperson.
My only criticism is the devotion of only a single page to passingly mentioning nuclear after going to Herculean lengths about the myriad challenges ahead of wind & solar to make them ubiquitous, economical, and practical. Nuclear is dismissed as "just too expensive in capital investment" with a reference to an article in the Economist that he agrees with. If I thought this book were about the alternatives more than the pitfalls of the hydrocarbon industry itself, this would be a pretty unforgivable oversight for me if you intend to be seen as approaching alternatives seriously and honestly.
August 10, 2017
I doubt the economic arguments in this neat little book would hold up. However, strongly in tune with the thought process that passionately advocates for a shift in not only the way we use and consume energy, but also the accepted paradigm of constant growth as the dominant yardstick of progress.
February 18, 2020
This is a good read, full of information about fracking. It's slightly dated, but I think that many of the predictions made by the author have come to pass.
Read
November 28, 2022Interesting. Now I need to write my thesis.
September 4, 2014
I totally agree with Heinberg's core thesis that society must take decisive and deliberate steps to move away from a hydrocarbon based economy. Yet there are many authors that state this case much better and don't resort to setting up straw men to try and make the case. The economic arguments Heinberg uses do not work as they rely on poorly constructed assumptions that current well economics show are false. His environmental claims primarily rest on what "may" happen or on the often misleading tactic of lumping any oil or gas well infraction with fracking although there has yet to be a single case of the act of fracking contaminating water through the subsurface. It is these false and misleading statements that ruin what is fundamentally a good, thought provoking piece of research.
July 8, 2020
A useful source of information and stats regarding the false promise of the fracking "miracle".
If you have a conversation with anyone unfamiliar with the concept of peak oil, they almost surely will retort that fracking has "solved the problem forever!" . . . well, no, not even close. Best to be armed with some stats and arguments before hand, and this book provides that ammunition.
Not for the peak oil 'beginner' at all. Read "Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Society" for a proper introduction to the subject.
If you have a conversation with anyone unfamiliar with the concept of peak oil, they almost surely will retort that fracking has "solved the problem forever!" . . . well, no, not even close. Best to be armed with some stats and arguments before hand, and this book provides that ammunition.
Not for the peak oil 'beginner' at all. Read "Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Society" for a proper introduction to the subject.
February 11, 2014
An excellent myth and spin busting look at Fracking industry, its failed economics, its overblow reserves, its environmental failings and the inevitable return to peak oil once this bubble has passed.
August 9, 2014
Probably the most important thing you can learn about right now. Reduce our has consumption. Do everything to up the renewables demand. Of we don't, we get what we deserve. And that's coming this decade.
August 25, 2014
I hope you have accounting degrees
It is very hard to follow unless you have PhD in accounting or economics. The author tries to explain his point but I feel it will fall on deaf ears. Doom and gloom yes. I agree with that but don't why I do by reading this.
It is very hard to follow unless you have PhD in accounting or economics. The author tries to explain his point but I feel it will fall on deaf ears. Doom and gloom yes. I agree with that but don't why I do by reading this.
March 21, 2015
Roopak
Good book in the sense that it is packed with a ton of interesting facts and figures based in science. However, a lot of the general commentary in the book is repetitive to other books written by the author
Good book in the sense that it is packed with a ton of interesting facts and figures based in science. However, a lot of the general commentary in the book is repetitive to other books written by the author
August 24, 2013
Wonderful book. Well written, easily understood. A must-read for anyone who really wants to know what is going on in the energy sector.
November 25, 2013
Just the right introduction to this issue I was looking for as I set out to learn much more about fracking. I feel well equipped to drill deeper! ;-)
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews