Alberta Trade Non-Fiction Book Award nominee 2008
"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.
Click here to see the Table of Contents or the Foreword.
Click here to listen to a podcast of David Finch talking about the book as part of the Edmonton Journal’s podcast series called “Lej Out Loud”.
To find out more about Finch's views of the oil industry and to see where he'll be appearing this fall, see davidfinch.blogspot.com.
Reviews:
"After reading David Finch's Pumped: Everyone's Guide to the Oilpatch, 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
Born in Cuba to missionary parents, David Finch is a historical consultant living in Calgary. With more than twenty years of consulting experience, David is also the author of several books on the oil industry, including Hell's Half Acre, and histories of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, the Canadian Society of Exploration Geologists, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen. He 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 in 1999.
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