Crude Awakening

Remember 1973? If you do, there are plenty of reasons to wish you didn't. Chief among them (right after leisure suits) would be the oil crisis that began in October. The Middle Eastern OPEC nations stopped exports to the United States and other Western nations just as stateside oil production was peaking. The artificial shortage that followed had devastating effects: The price of gas quadrupled in the United States, climbing from 25 cents to more than a dollar, in a matter of months. The American Automobile Association reported that in one isolated week up to 20 percent of the country's gas stations had no fuel; in some places motorists were forced to wait in line for two to three hours to gas up. The number of homes built with gas heat dropped.

But that was the 1970s and this is now, right? Not according to David Goodstein. Saudi princes and SUV drivers may do well to read his new book, "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil" (W.W. Norton), in which Goodstein argues that our oil-dependent civilization is in for a crude awakening when the world's oil supply really begins to run out-possibly within a few decades. "As we learned in 1973, the effects of an oil shortage can be immediate and drastic, while it may take years, perhaps decades, to replace the vast infrastructure that supports the manufacture, distribution, and consumption of the products of the 20 million barrels of oil we Americans alone gobble up each day," he writes.

Goodstein's book is not a happy read, but an important one. In layman's terms, he explains the science behind his prediction and why other fossil fuels might not do the trick when the wells run dry. Goodstein, a physicist and vice-provost at the California Institute of Technology, recently spoke with NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker about the fundamental principles of oil supply and demand, and whether civilization can survive without fossil fuels.

Excerpts: NEWSWEEK: This is scary stuff. You're saying that oil production will soon peak.

David Goodstein: The prediction that it will peak-that is to say the crisis will come when we reach a peak when half the oil has been used up-that prediction quantitatively is unquestionably true. But the quantitative question of when the peak will occur depends on extremely undependable numbers. The so-called proven oil reserves as reported by various countries and companies around the world are often just guesses and they're often not even honest guesses. Among those who would analyze those figures, some have predicted that it will come as early as this year; others, within this decade. It could possibly be in the next decade. But I think that's about as far as you can push it. Let's start at the beginning. What is oil and what do we use it for?

Oil is hydrocarbons that grew up in the earth when source rock full of organic inclusions sank to just the right depth-not too little and not too much-and got cooked over the ages. It took hundreds of millions of years for the world's supply of oil to be created. The oil is used to make gasoline obviously, but also home heating oil, diesel fuel but also 90 percent of all the organic chemicals that we use. That includes pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, plastics, fabrics and so on. They are petrochemicals, meaning they originate as oil.