With a well-paced, easy-to-read style,Pumped is a much-needed primer to the Byzantine world of Canada's oil patch. From the fascinating history and politics (seven national energy programs, yikes!) to
With a well-paced, easy-to-read style,Pumped
is a much-needed primer to the Byzantine world of Canada's oil patch. From the fascinating history and politics (seven national energy programs, yikes!) to the booms and busts, mistakes and lessons, it's all here."— Alister Thomas, managing editor of
The Roughneck, Energy Processing Canada and
Propane Canada magazines
Seasoned petroleum historian David Finch engages and entertains as he acquaints us with the basic vocabulary and mechanics of Canada's oil industry right through its most complex issues.
Perhaps you know the answers to some of the basics:
- What is a barrel of oil?
- Where does it come from?
- How does it get into the gas tank?
- Why is oil so political?
Do you recall the details of some of the programs?
- What was the National Energy Program,
- The National Oil Program,
- The Western Accord,
- and why did they matter?
Are you well-versed enough in the politics to know the answers to these questions?
- Are we really running out of oil?
- What is the current state of the tar sands?
- What do "upstream," "midstream," and "downstream" mean?
- Who controls oil and gas in Canada and why does it cost so much if it belongs to us, the people of Canada?
- And finally, Why does this industry dominate the world's economic and political arenas.
With short chapters, illustrations, maps, photographs, and a user friendly index-glossary, Pumped makes the complicated, jargon rich, high-stakes world of petroleum exploration, excavation, and consumption easy to understand.
Finch provides a balanced, knowledgeable, and often humorous primer on the mechanics, history, and politics of Canada's oil industry.
Alberta Trade Non-Fiction Book Award nominee 2008
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ContentsForeword By Andrew Nikiforuk
Hi There An Introduction to This Book
Jargon The Roughneck and the Pump Jack
Discovery Oil Is Where You Find It
Gushers Drilling for Oil
Consumers Using Twenty-five Barrels of Oil
Conflict Seven Examples of Canadian National Energy Programs
Outrageous The Price at the Pump
Bitumen The Oil Sands
Frontiers Oilfields on the Edge
OOPS! Mistakes and Lessons
Booms This Time It's Different
Glossary and Index
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David Finch
Born in Cuba, David Finch is a historical consultant living in Calgary. With more than twenty years of consulting experience, he is the author of several books on the oil industry, including Hell's Half Acre, and is a regular contributor to The Calgary Herald, Alberta Oil: The Magazine, and Alberta Views. David received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Dedicated Investigation and Professional Scholarship in the Study of Canadian Petroleum History from the Petroleum History Society of Calgary.
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"After reading David Finch's Pumped: Everyone's Guide to the Oil Patch, I can tell a monkeyboard from a doghouse, a doodlebug from dowser. More importantly, however, I have an appreciation for the workings of the energy engine that powers Alberta's raging boom. . . There are no sides taken here in the simmering debate amongst the industry, environmentalists, the public at large and the government, just lots of information presented in easily understood bits."
— Calgary Herald
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