Erin Neal has been living a secluded life in the Arizona desert since the death of his girlfriend and he isn’t happy when an oil company executive comes calling. A number of important Saudi wells have stopped producing and Erin is the world’s foremost expert in resolving just these kinds of complications. As far as he’s concerned, though, he’s left that world behind. Not his problem. Homeland Security sees things differently. Erin quickly finds himself stuck in the Saudi desert, studying a new bacteria with a voracious appetite for oil and an uncanny talent for destroying drilling equipment. But worst of all is its ability to spread. It soon becomes clear that if this contagion isn’t stopped, it will infiltrate the world’s petroleum reserves, cutting the industrial world off from the energy that provides the heat, food, and transportation necessary for survival. Erin realizes that there’s something eerily familiar about this bacteria. And that it couldn’t possibly have evolved on its own.
In this romantic thriller Cassie Young is a rising star at a prestigious energy consulting firm when she discovers secret files that reveal the truth about the world’s oil supplies; and, it’s not good news. Soon, she finds herself locked in a game of cat and mouse that places her career and ultimately her life on the line. After reading her story, you’ll never think quite the same way about filling your gas tank.
Cassie’s transformation from one of the firm’s true believers into a worried skeptic begins when she meets Victor Chernov, a former oil trader. Contrary to the public pronouncements of her firm and many official agencies, Victor says the world may start running dangerously short of oil–the lifeblood of modern society–within only a few years. In her search for the truth, Cassie uncovers evidence that convinces her Victor is right. But that evidence now makes her a target for those who desperately want to keep an unknowing world in the dark.
A startling reinterpretation of contemporary events, Prelude follows Cassie to the Canadian tar sands; to the heart of Houston, the energy city; to an offshore drilling platform; and to the streets and suites of Washington, D.C. in a journey that unlocks the mysteries of a substance that the world cannot do without.
What if there was a revolution in Saudi Arabia? What if all of the oil-producing nations joined OPEC? What if we had to stop exploiting the resources and peoples of the world? This fictional story gives a powerful new vision of the future.
Relato de ficción que forma parte de The Simpler Way: working for transition from consumer society to a simpler, more cooperative, just and ecologically sustainable society.
It seems to be a very normal Monday morning. But in the space of only a few days, the world’s oil supplies have been severed and at a horrifying pace things begin to unravel everywhere. And this is no natural disaster: someone is behind this.
Jenny is stuck in Manchester, fighting desperately against the rising chaos to get back to London, where her children are marooned as events begin to spiral out of control: riots, raging fires, looting, rape and murder. In the space of a week, London is transformed into a lawless and anarchic vision of hell.
Jenny’s estranged husband, oil engineer Andy Sutherland, is stranded in Iraq with a company of British soldiers, desperate to find a way home to his family, trapped as transport links and the very infrastructure of daily life begin to collapse around him.
And against all this, a mysterious man is tracking Andy’s family. He’ll silence anyone who might be able to reveal the identities of those behind this global disaster. It seems that the same people who now have a stranglehold on the future of civilisation have flexed their muscles before, at other significant tipping points in history, and they are prepared to do anything to keep their secret – and their power – safe.
This is the fictional story about the challenges a family faces when a drop in the value of the dollar leads to a steep rise in the price of oil. The book is well done, and not overly scary, because while the high price of oil has some moderately bad consequences, somehow, the family seems to fare pretty well–in part because of preparations made by the grandfather, who has since passed on. The back of the book mentions a number of peak oil resources, including The Oil Drum.
