| HN Mirror

After sports and politics, oil and energy are probably among the most data-rich areas of human activity.

There's a global trade, it's critically important, the commodity, its trade, and data are quite fluid.

The US EIA, EU's IEA, and various private data providers (BP's Annual Statistical Review being among the more notable) are all excellent sources. And of course the financial markets for current trading prices.

For a wider viewpoint, there are numerous books and references.

For a general history (through the early 1990s), Daniel Yergin's The Prize is simply staggering. He's very much an industry partisan and cheerleader, but the story he tells is worth hearing for anyone, and to me read as strongly cautionary. It's quite well researched and you'll find a wealth of other earlier references within it.

For a more current general reading, Vaclav Smil cranks out a book or two a year, and has covered energy, energy transitions, and oil repeatedly since the early 1990 through the current year. Again, he does excellent research and will have numerous references worth exploring.

The IPCC have extensive information on oil, coal, and gas activity, past and future, as well as explorations of alternative energy. There are a few reports which specifically look at the energy mix and considerations. These are voluminous, and the consortium's website is a bit of a disaster to navigate, but the information is absolutely first-rate. I can check later to find the specific reference I have in mind, ping back if you'd like a pointer.

On the energy conservation / transition / renewables side, mileage varies. I'm a firm believer that we'll have to go that direction, but also caution that there's a lot of woo, bogosity, and outright scams around. The US national energy research labs, particularly the National Renewabale Energy Lab (NREL) in Colorado, do excellent (if occasionally politically-motivated) work.

Rocky Mountain Institute has looked into alternative and low-carbon energy since the early 1980s, under Amory and Hunter Lovins.

The Post-Carbon Institute is a less-technical, more political group based in Norther California, which publishes materials on peak oil and post-carbon issues. It and 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben, are among the better decarbonisation groups I'm aware of. (There are many such, quality ... varies.)

The Worldwatch Institute seem to have gone inactive but published a series of books on the State of the World, covering numerous issues. Many are available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/search.php?query=worldwatch+institute+st... Definitely opinionated, cover much more than oil, but high-quality information.

On who to look out for --- I'd take anything coming from the Libertarian/Free Market think tank network know as the Atlas Network with massive heapings of salt. That includes the Cato Institute, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute, and many hundreds of other organisations around the world. Fortunately there's a handy list: https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners

If you'd like to know why, I recommend Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway's Merchants of Doubt, which discusses the half-century-plus campaign of propaganda and disinformation these groups have carried out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

(As with much propaganda, there's often a kernel of truth, and frequently much more. The problem is that this is wrapped in a large helping of distraction and rhetoric whose principle aim is to persuade rather than inform.)