Oil 101

I picked this up wanting a better grasp on how the oil industry actually works upstream, midstream, downstream, refining, pricing, all of it. Oil 101 breaks it all down in plain language without dumbing it down. It covers everything from exploration and drilling to refining, distribution, and how oil prices are set globally.What I appreciated most is how comprehensive it is without being political or hype-driven. It's focused on the facts, the mechanics, and the flow of the industry. There’s some density in the middle chapters, but if you stick with it, you’ll walk away with a way deeper understanding of how oil actually moves through the economy and how to think about energy in a global sense.Definitely recommend for anyone in energy, investing, logistics, or just wanting to know what’s going on behind the gas pump.

Oil 101 is a fascinating book. It explains everything I wanted to know about oil.Over the past few years with rapidly rising and falling oil prices, politicians, TV pundits and market commentators blamed speculators, OPEC, refineries and a host of other seemingly random events. I felt that everyone understood only tiny portions of the oil business. There was no single source which pulled together disparate areas describing oil. Internet searches for oil definitions yielded individual descriptions without an overall context.Downey's Oil 101 brings all parts of the oil business together in a logical easily understood manner. The sequence of chapters is perfect and the author makes no assumption of prior knowledge. The index is so thorough that I use the book daily as a desk reference.The chapter on the history of oil is refreshing and is very much worth the price of the book in itself. The book rose my interest to visit the world's first oil well in Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania where the modern oil industry started in 1859. It was certainly an interesting trip.The book explains clearly how oil markets operate and oil prices change. The amount of useful information contained in this book is phenomenal. A more important point that I like this book is that the book is very interesting and easy to read. This is exceptional for a highly specialized technical book. I highly recommend Downey's Oil 101. Below is the table of contents:Part One: Oil fundamentalsChapter 1: A brief history of oilChapter 2: A crude oil assayChapter 3: Components of oil liquidsChapter 4: Chemistry of oilChapter 5: Industry overviewChapter 6: Exploration and productionChapter 7: RefiningChapter 8: StandardsChapter 9: Finished productsChapter 10: PetrochemicalsChapter 11: Transporting oilChapter 12: StorageChapter 13: SeasonalityChapter 14: ReservesChapter 15: Environmental regulationsChapter 16: New engine technologiesPart Two: Oil marketsChapter 17: Oil pricesChapter 18: Forward oil markets - futures and swapsChapter 19: Forward oil markets - optionsChapter 20: Managing oil price risk

The nice thing about this book is that it is instructive regarding oil; I learned an enormous amount by reading it. The not-so-nice thing about this book is that it feels like a rough draft at times, perhaps hurriedly written, with typos and grammatical mistakes and word usage errors ("comprise" is used incorrectly throughout the book, except on page 277). I would have liked to see more depth of explanation in the trading portion of the book, as well as footnotes explaining and referencing some of the author's assertions. There are a few technologies that he clearly doesn't believe in, but aside from those, he is fairly circumspect.It's a solid book; if I were the author, I'd update it to include a more modern take on fracking, batteries, renewables, and electric transportation, and send it to a professional editor. Seriously, at times the errors and language made me think I had received a Chinese knockoff of a book written in English.Buy Oil 101 if you are a scientific person who follows the financial markets, but you have never worked with nor traded oil. Oil 101 isn't the be-all, end-all of books on oil, but it is a worthy place to start.