O Forward oil markets - futures and swaps - 4 O New engine technologies - 1 (superficial but unimportant in this context) O Petrochemicals - 2 (not something he's really interested in it seems) O Chemistry of oil - 2 (since when has C been able to have 5 bonds. The list of its chapters will give you a good feel for it (followed by my rating for each, 1-5 with 1 being weak, 3 adequate, and 5 excellent): Very useful comprehensive overview of oil and the oil industry written in a straight-forward no-nonsense style.
The fact that OIL 101 is now ten years old may make it slightly less efficacious than it was when it was first published in 2009.
It will take some work, but you'll come away very well informed. (Different octanes tend to stay separate in the pipeline, one after the other, and as for tinting and the inevitable "BR-549" ingredients retail gas companies flog to distinguish their product from their competitors', those are added after the gasoline comes out of the pipeline at destination, pre-retail sale.) For example, he discusses Saudi Arabian estimates of their oil supplies (they constantly overstate, her avers) and how different companies' gasoline gets pushed through the same common pipeline without damage to the product. This means that for laymen like you and me it isn't exactly an easy-breezy read, but author Morgan Patrick Downey, in my opinion, does an amazingly good job. I still refer to it regularly and it is never far from my desk when I am active in the markets.This is the kind of book read by people in the oil industry to get an overall view of the exploration, extraction, refining, and marketing of petroleum and petroleum products (including retail gasoline), and by financial analysts to find out how the pieces of such a complex industry fits together. It is surprisingly easy to read - but due to the sheer size one ideally wants to go through it whilst on the beach for a fortnight! Some of the trivia that Yergin covers is what makes this book so memorable and entertaining - yet the book also serves a very serious purpose in explaining how the oil industry evolved over more than a century. It also brings about an understanding of present day politics - for instance it helped me understand why the UK is referred to by Iran as 'Little Satan' (with the US as 'Big Satan'). But by the end of it you will know more about oil than most industry participants. It is a lot of book however - at over 900 pages and the text is in a fine font. I was surprised how well written and engaging this book is. It is hard to write a history of any industry that is both comprehensive, educational and entertaining. It may sound like a description of JR Ewing (of Dallas fame) but the real life characters that Daniel Yergin describes are every bit as loud as JR. Passion, greed, the pursuit of money, double dealing, lying, cheating, corruption, coups.this book has it all.
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