The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe [Hardcover]

Jeremy Leggett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2005

In The Empty Tank, Jeremy Leggett, an internationally renowned geologist and energy entrepreneur who spent the 1980s working for Big Oil, sounds the alarm about an unprecedented crisis.

The oil topping point–the day half of all the world’s oil is used up–will be reached, by many calculations, sometime soon. In fact, it may already be upon us. When the financial markets realize what’s happening, an economic crash and soaring energy prices will result. The entire global marketplace we all inhabit will crack and crumble.

Oil companies and governments don’t want you to know this. They have been covering up depletion, while stoking addiction and holding back alternatives. Leggett shows how major energy producers have been exposed providing false information about climate change and underground reserves.

He describes how governments collude with private enterprise and one another to keep the global economy hooked on oil. And he explains the science behind oil extraction, demonstrating with unimpeachable expertise why the well is indeed running dry a lot faster than we think.

Written with verve and eloquence, The Empty Tank explains how we became addicted to oil and why that addiction is leading us toward disaster. Yet Leggett also points the way forward. All the technology we need to get off the road to disaster is already at hand. A new Manhattan Project for energy can save us if we can wake up and confront the problem directly, as this important book urges us to do.

"Among the shelf full of books on the oil situation that have been published in the last year or so, (this) is far and away the best."
-Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute

What’s it all about? ... tough titles made simple by David Shukman
THE EMPTY TANK by Jeremy Leggett

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

OIL, gas, hot air and the global energy crisis, according to the explanation on the front cover. Delving into the nightmare scenario of mankind sleepwalking to global disaster, this book focuses on two related dangers: how we’ll run out of oil far sooner than we think and how burning what’s left of it will warm our planet to a catastrophic level. The central contention is that the oil industry is in a state of denial about the size of its reserves. The scandal over Shell’s distortion of its real figures is said to be the tip of the iceberg. And the conclusion is stark: that we’re all using the black stuff at a far faster rate than geologists are finding new deposits, and that as soon as the truth gets out there’ll be panic in the markets, soaring prices and a mega-crash. It’s scary.

SO IS IT READABLE?

YES, though towards the end some sections lapse into lists of points. But the writing is always clear and conveys complicated but important technicalities in very accessible terms.

DAVID SHUKMAN is environment & science correspondent for BBC News
Daily Mail, 18 November 2005

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Just in time to capitalize on the twin disasters of Katrina and high gasoline prices comes this jeremiad on the cataclysmic end of the fossil-fuels era. Geologist and ex-Greenpeace official Leggett, author of The Carbon War, argues incisively that oil production has peaked, with dwindling supplies and soaring prices in the offing. Worse than the possibility that the world cannot cope, he feels, is the threat that it will cope all too well by burning more coal and coal-derived synthetic fuels, thus exacerbating atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up and global warming. This will lead the planet down "the road to horror," illustrated in a sketchy montage of the usual environmental doomsday scenarios: rising sea levels, extreme weather, famine and war. Leggett, who runs a renewable energy company, proffers a boosterish brief for renewable energy sources like solar and wind power as the only solutions to the crisis. His rather shallow treatment of energy options extols such dubious green nostrums as ethanol, bio-mass (i.e., crop-burning) and hydrogen power while dismissing nuclear energy, but doesn't provide the kind of meticulous accounting of costs, benefits and disadvantages such assessments demand. Leggett derides fossil-fuel apologists as fundamentalists convinced they will be Raptured before the environment implodes; his own visionary coda prophesies economic collapse and the rise of fascism before humanity is finally saved by renewables, which will bring peace, localism and deserts abloom with fields irrigated by desalinization plants. A little alarmism is called for when discussing energy and the environment, but these issues also deserve a more thorough and sober account of the choices we face than Leggett provides.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Like fellow petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes in Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak (2005), Leggett summarizes data about reserves, discoveries, and consumption that convincingly indicate that world oil production is in an irreversible decline. For a convert such as Leggett--he repudiated his Big Oil employer, worked for Greenpeace, and now runs an alternative-energy company--the end of oil would be good news, if he saw the Consumer Empire, as he sarcastically calls the U.S., converting to renewable energy technologies. Sensing inertia, he wrote this "call to arms." Writing in a light, humorous manner that sometimes hits, sometimes misses, Leggett makes the global-warming case, seasons his summary of oil-industry history with his opinions, and, in personal asides, wryly regales his efforts in business conclaves to persuade behemoths like British Petroleum of the green viewpoint. Trying to be practical--and the author is clearly not antibusiness--Leggett will connect with readers anxious about the energy conundrum, though, regrettably, his epilogue may alienate American evangelicals, who are among its targets. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Random House (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400065275
• ISBN-13: 978-1400065271
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,792,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read -- one of the best books on peak oil., December 4, 2005

By 

Michael Mills (Goleta, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe (Hardcover)

Of the 8 or so books I have read on peak oil, this one is the most
compelling, reasonable and well-informed. If you are to read only one
book on peak oil, this is the one to choose.

Leggett has the credibility
of being a former professor of geology, a former oil industry insider (who
then converted to a global warming and oil depletion activist), and who now
runs his own renewable energy company. He knows the insiders of both the
oil business and oil-related government energy institutions. He knows what
makes them tick.

He correctly notes that we can't rely on the energy companies or government
to give us warning or leadership regarding oil depletion. Instead, the
demand for renewable energy must come from a groundswell of public
concern and support, until it becomes the tipping point that affects
our institutions. This is a change that will come from the ground
up, not from the top down.

Although he sees a virtually unavoidable peak oil economic depression in the near future, he
does offer a ray of hope that we can cure our self-destructive oilcoholism with
renewable energy -- and do so at the grassroots individual and community level.

Highly recommended.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fact-Fille, Well Reasoned!, December 27, 2005

By 

Loyd E. Eskildson "Pragmatist" (Phoenix, AZ.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe (Hardcover)

Leggett begins by reminding us that oil is vital to almost everything we do. The world currently consumes about 29 billion barrels/year, and U.S. officials estimate this will rise to 43 billion by 2025. With this increase, the U.S. will find itself more tightly tied to mid-East rulers - yet, at least one estimate is that raising CAFE requirements 2.7 mpg would eliminate the need for Saudi and Iranian oil. Instead, we have allowed SUVs to be largely exempted from efficiency requirements, resulting in a DECREASE in mpg in the last decade.

One expert suggests that the U.S. Armed Forces are increasingly being transformed into a global oil-protection force; the U.S. recently invaded oil producer #15 because its ruler was a tyrant using deadly force against his own people, while ignoring #1, #2, #4, #6, #10, #12, #13, and #14 - perhaps the real reason is that producer #15 is also #3 in reserves.

Leggett, a Cambridge PhD in geology, has no doubt that a peak in oil production is coming - the only question is "when?" The most optimistic (U.S. government and oil companies) projections predict the peak will occur in 2030, the least optimistic (leading independent geologists) see this occurring much sooner - 2005. The optimistic rely in part on relief via Alberta's oil sands and Wyoming's oil shale. However, even the most optimistic oil sands estimates foresee about 3 million barrels/day by 2012 (only 3% of total demand), while pessimists are doubtful that enough water and natural gas (for heating the oil) can be utilized to achieve this. Similarly, optimists see 2 million barrels/day from Wyoming oil shale by 2011, while pessimists doubt the environment can support even that.

Another source of optimism is mid-East countries' claims of ability to easily ramp-up production. Leggett writes, however, that even taking them at their word (and there are reasons not to), this would not cover increased demand by 2011 (assuming 1.5%/year increase), or today (assuming a 3.5%/year increase - that of China and the U.S. already).

The one topic presented that I did not understand involves converting coal to gasoline - developed and utilized by Nazi Germany during WWII. Leggett states that China is producing this, and expected total costs are $15/barrel - certainly a bargain at today's prices, but Leggett does not treat this as a potential solution to oil shortages. (It would still produce CO2.)

As for natural gas - Leggettt says 40% of U.S. reserved have been used, 70% of reserves lie within Russia and the mid-East, and U.S. demand is expected to grow 50% by 2025.

Leggett cites a few instances of oil companies threatening individuals and organizations with loss of support for publishing predictions of near-term shortages - the likely reason being immediate and drastic losses in their stock values.

And then there is the accompanying problem of global warming. The insurance industry represents about 10% of the global economy and is at high risk of bankruptcy via superstorms and drought-related fires. The media, however, unintentionally downplay the issue by providing equal time to those claiming "no problem" - despite the growing evidence in support. For example, the ten warmest years in history have all occurred since 1990, and each year since 1997 has fallen into that category. Worse yet, the CO2 rise may be accelerating, per measurements in 2003 and 2004 at the premier site in Hawaii.

Leggett believes we CAN replace oil, natural gas, and coal with renewable energy, but NOT before the shortfall first takes effect. He also cites Lovins that it would be economical to do so - costing $180 billion in the next decade, and saving $130 billion/year by 2025. He is concerned, however, that we may only go part-way, and also increase coal utilization - increasing the severity of global warming.

Reading "The Empty Tank" was a pleasure - despite its important warnings.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent review, well balanced view of Energy Issues we face, January 1, 2006

By 

Omar A. Sawaf (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe (Hardcover)

As an investor who continue to research this area, I found the book very concise and easy to read without the need for a technical background. A good summary of many related subjects in one book. I share the author's views on depletion and the long term advantages of renewables and its required support and adoption. However, I found his imminent doomsday scenario of a 1929 style depression triggered by 'an empty tank' to be without supporting analysis. If this is a 'wake up' call for industry and society to act, I am all for it.