Customer Reviews

Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century (Angel Series)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First of all, as to the reviewer who advised the authors should question the environmental impact of our voracious appetite for energy:

The human race could adopt a simpler life. The only way that can happen is if we have a massive die-off of most of the human population. Also, it would be a society where people die young due to lack of modern-day health care, and so forth.

I believe the assumption the authors have made regarding energy demand are sound. People WANT to live what they perceive to be a better life. Some of the aspects of such a life are: advanced health care, the ability to travel, the ability to have a career involving challenging intellectual pursuits, as opposed to having to devote one's life to doing grunt work in order to put food on one's own table.

I am totally prejudiced on this matter. I believe the amenties of modern society have been of tremendous benefit to me. (frankly, if I had lived in older days, due to my physical frailties, I no doubt would have died long ago).

Now a few people may prefer the simpler life, but the vast majority of the people of the world want the amenities that we in the developed world have. I don't see the people of China saying, "hey, we'd rather spend our lives harvesting rice and living in mud huts".


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OK, so much for the rant, now on to my review.


The book is a good overview of the peak oil situation. For those not familiar with peak oil, it provides a lot of the fundamental facts that those who have studied this issue have discovered.

For example, the fact that once we can no longer run our society on fossil fuels, IF there is a path to a comparable standard of living in the future, the mainstay of our energy use will be in the form of electricity.


There are a couple of beefs I have with the book, though, which led me not to give it 5 stars.

1). It really is essentially a book about peak oil, not investing. Upon reading the book, it seems clear to me that the book is motivated primarily by the desire to expand awareness of the peak oil problem to a broader cross-section of the public, not to provide people investment ideas for how to profit from the transition. And that is all to the good in my view, because I think the former is a much more important goal. So the title strikes me as a bit disingenuous, perhaps trying to snare people out to make a buck on alternative energy and then give them a tutorial on peak oil, with the names of a few companies thrown in in order to justify the title of the book.

In my case both causes interest me. I am retired and I am spending some of my time trying to become knowledgable about peak oil in case I can find a way to do anything constructive to help fix the problem. And, I am also an investor, and focused heavily on commodities.

I tend to be skeptical about investing in new technologies, however, because it seems to me it is very hard to anticipate who the real winners are going to turn out to be, and stocks in hot new areas that seem to hold promise for solving important problems of society (the biggest of which is energy) tend to be bid up to sky high prices and thus are extremely risky. One specific mention was about the oil refiners like Valero who can process heavy sour crude. Well, right now the refiners are in the dumpster due to low crack spreads, so who knows maybe Valero is a good buy right now (I have been on the fence about buying some myself). On the other hand, the oil producing nations are seeking to do more of the downstream processing of oil themselves. I can't remember whether the book mentions this, I think it probably does. The Middle East states have a population explosion and need jobs for their huge population of young people. So they want to build refineries and sell us gasoline instead of oil.

Hence, I think there is no guarantee that US refiners will even have oil to process in the future. When I hear Bush talk about how we need to build more refineries, well it's no more idiotic than most all the other garbage you are hearing from the politicians, but does Bush realize that the oil producing nations are building refineries and want to just sell us finished products like gasoline? (in his defense, I am sure McCain and Obama are equally clueless on that)

Another point, before I forget: The reviewer that said the book was US centric I do agree had a good point. I live in the US and an pretty US centric myself, but I do recall thinking a couple times while reading the book that in some places it focused on the US when it should have been focusing globally.


Now, my last criticism and perhaps biggest: The authors have a definite bias for renewables and against fossil fuels and nuclear.

Now in the long run I totally agree that we need to switch over to renewables because the nonrenewables won't be there any more.

However, the authors express all the pitfalls in terms of cost, timetables, etc. associated with the big existing sources of energy with great zeal, while they speak glowingly about renewables with very little discussion of the huge pitfalls and challenges.

The most obvious example is that they say very little about the fact that since most renewables produce intermittently (when the wind blows, when the sun shines), for us to transition to a future based on renewable energy requires the development of massive energy storage facilities. And I would say that right now even though renewable sources such as large-scale solar generation are not particularly far along in implementation, large-scale energy storage is at a far earlier stage of infancy. So in my view the development of large-scale energy storage is liable to be an even bigger challenge than the development of large-scale renewable energy production facilities.


But all in all, it was nevertheless a very good book. It covers the issues associated with peak oil to a moderate level, so it is perfect for someone new to peak oil to get a solid grounding in most of the important issues, and someone who has already studied the issue somewhat is liable to learn a few new things from the book as I did.

Profit From The Peak is one of those rare works that not only decodes what is an esoteric and dense subject, but puts forth the information without bias, and without spin.

Personally, I think this volume has within its covers information that can make the reader a fortune. And, Heaven forbid, if things really go off the deep end, it could literally be a life saver.

I've been reading Hicks' work for years now, and can attest to his uncanny ability to take the big picture and distill it into a series of concise, clear and highly profitable steps, time and time again.

Teamed up with Chris Nelder, the duo has really hit this one out of the park. Even a true novice to the concept of Peak Oil can pick up this book and come away with a keen understanding of the core concepts, and a bullet-proof strategy for long-term profit.

For the investor, the principle of Occam's Razor is true here; Go long oil, in all its incarnations. But doing so without understanding exactly how the world got to this point--a total dependence on a finite energy source--would do one a disservice.

There's simply too much at stake, globally and personally, not to be fully up to speed on the concepts and strategies explained so eloquently in Profit From The Peak.

I urge any serious thinker, investor....anyone at all, to read this book as soon as possible. Tomorrow may simply be too late.

My hat is off to Mr. Hicks and Mr. Nelder. This is a very, very good book and well worth the time and money to read it. I do not share the authors optimistic view of the future. I have learned this (1) people cannot or will not imagine an outcome in which they don't want to happen (2) we love good endings in books and movies (3) we love when the good guys always win and we are saved just before the storm. I read comments people post on Peak Oil wedsites and they are already experts on Oil, Saudi Arabia and Russia, yet it's very clear they've never worked in the Oil Industry, never been to Russia and wouldn't know a Saudi if he flew a 747 up his butt. However, Mr. Hicks and Mr. Nelder are well informed and I am impressed with the quality of their technical data and their research. These are two very smart men. I found no mistakes in their technical data in this book. However, they left out one of the most important Peak Oil factors which is labor. Who's going to build our great new energy world? You can't replace 78 million boomers with 48 million Gen Xer's and the numbers after the Gen Xer's aren't good at all. Everyone assumes (without knowing) that people in 2030 will have the knowledge and technical skills to save our energy world. How do you know that? Money is just a claim on someone else's labor. Without labor your money becomes worthless. So Mr. Hicks and Mr. Nelder have us driving into a happy electric future with electric cars and mass electric transit. They say "never sell short humanity." We will be saved by smart creative humans with new technology. Don't hold your breath! This is the same logic that allowed people to believe that the American Civil War would only last two weeks and WWI was "the war to end all wars." Over all I found the book very, very good and the Data Good and some very good investment advice. Regards, Keith Renick, Project Materials Specialist, Central & Western Region Projects Department, Project Management Team, Riyadh Refinery, Saudi Aramco Oil Company, Retired.

According to the authors, the supply of oil is dwindling
rapidly. We must have viable alternatives in the short to
intermediate term. Simultaneously, the supply of oil
is dwindling and global population is soaring to 9 billion
by mid-century. 50% of USA imports of oil are from
Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Ultimately,
true oil could reach $500/ barrel by the author !
How do you fight back? You do so by building autos
that can get 100 MPG amongst other R & D investments.

In addition, the supply of oil will last another 30 years
absent any major oil discoveries. A $20 trillion dollar
investment in R and D is needed to quench the current
industrial thirst for energy. Lastly, 60% of proven oil
reserves are in the Middle East.

There are huge investment opportunities. i.e.
o Suncor Energy is the largest tar sands company.
o Allegro Biodiesel Corporation has expertise in
biodiesel fuels.
o Peerless Manufacturing Company deals in pollution
abatement.

There are a number of viable alternative energy sources. i.e.

o solar energy and power generated in desert environments
o tar sand re-processing
o cleaner burning coal, scrubber technological enhancements...
o nuclear power
o The "Artificial Sun"- a multi-nation fusion project
o wind mill power for farming and rural areas
o hydroelectric power and environmental safeguards of salmon et. al.

The author should have developed some of the above options
in the work. Nonetheless, the book provides a rich source of
information with profound future implications. It is the
"Future Shock" of the energy industry.

Most of time while reading this book I was thinking, "Why didn't I know that?" I would recommend this well written and easy-to-understand book to everyone who wants to gain a broad understanding about what is going on with energy and oil. The target market appears to be the intelligent layman with helpful hints on how your investing strategy might benefit. Suddenly, when watching the talking heads you will spot the horrible, over-simplified, childish thinking that we are bombarded with every day, especially from the silver bullet types. It is well researched and referenced, and I highly recommend it.

There is little to disagree with in the ideas brought forth in this book. There is simply too much credible evidence about the depletion of fossil fuels to credibly deny it. The book provides a good primer for people who have not heard of peak oil and it is worth reading for that reason alone.
The idea of profiting from this information needs to be put into perspective though. The great Peter Lynch would often extol the virtues of investing in things that we encounter in our every day lives rather than taking the advice of investment gurus who might have other agendas. To that extent, this book makes a lot of sense for patient investors. The challenge of investing in new energy technology is that you are dealing with a lot of very small companies. These companies have the right ideas but they also have a long distance to travel from emergence to market leadership and potential investors should be wary and expect to hold their invvestments for considerable periods of time. Many companies will not make it and will either be gobbled up by larger companies or go down in flames. So investing with a wary eye is critical and following the sector and individual companies, especially chat groups on the Internet may be a good strategy. Investing in these emerging companies is not for the faint of heart though they are mostly onto something important.

Hicks & Nelder have written a highly informative if North American centric essay with respect to the "peak oil" question and leave the writer in no doubt that the world is in deep energy trouble. They detail the mainstream energy alternatives and rightly write off the hype surrounding the Canadian tar sands solution as environmentaly unsustainable and costly. They further assess "alternative" solutions like solar, wind etc as many years off being a real solution to the real time collapse of oil as our base energy supply. However they also write of the continued use of fossil fuel as not sustainable due inability to sequest CO2 - which is not the case. Unfortunately like most US scribes they rarely recognise or acknowledge technology advances going on outside of the US of A. Australia for example has made substantial advances in "clean coal" technology, particularly in brown coal, with the major power stations in the State of Victoria about to turn to such technology with savings of up to 60% in CO2 emissions. Shell/Anglo American, Victoria Coal Resources, ESI and other companies are about to start a huge expansion of brown coal mining focusing on coal to oil and production of Urea and LNG. Coal to oil (from brown coal)appears to be the worlds only immediate proven solution to the current energy crisis and Australia has the cheapest, accessible security safe available resource. Well written but US centric.

The authors of this superb book may not be well-known, but they have written the absolutely best peak energy book that currently exists. I should know, since I've bought and read all of the most hyped of this genre, and this is the most up to date, the best written, the most detailed, of all of them. You cannot make an informed decision about the peak energy issue(s), if you don't have this book, I think that's the best way to express what I feel.

This book is an exciting read. Starts out with a history of oil and develops into fossil fuel alternatives. The author builds a convincing case that we are on the verge of peak oil production and how we need to prepare with the decline.

I consider this book as a must read re the oil crisis. I learned a lot of things about oil that I never knew i.e. a barrel of oil can only produce about 16 gallons of gasoline,