Books we're reading this month

Twilight in the Desert: The coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy , by Matthew R Simmons (John Wiley and Sons, 2005)

Unlike so much else that is happening in our rapidly shifting world, the depletion of oil resources is not on ideology being pushed or an interest being preserved. It is a genuine, bona fide alteration to prevailing reality. This book presents the technical facts of the case and within a few chapters, you will be conversant on esoteric but important subjects like why opening more wells on the Ghawar oil field draws more pipe-corroding water into the reserve, and why that’s serious trouble. And then you learn why Saudi Arabia has done exactly this to make more oil available at those times when demand spikes, to keep the price down. The reasons are not obvious, but they should be: the facts in this book should be common knowledge in economies that utterly depend on oil to exist at all.

- Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>