physics

The Oil Drum

The Oil Drum is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Oil Drum rather than just read about it. In short: The Oil Drum was a website devoted to analysis and discussion of energy and its impact on society that described itself as an "energy, peak oil & sustainability research and news site". The Oil Drum was published by the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, a Colorado non-profit corporation.

Key takeaways

The Oil Drum belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Oil Drum to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Oil Drum from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Oil Drum was a website devoted to analysis and discussion of energy and its impact on society that described itself as an "energy, peak oil & sustainability research and news site". The Oil Drum was published by the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, a Colorado non-profit corporation. The site was a resource for information on many energy and sustainability topics, including peak oil, and related concepts such as oil megaprojects, Hubbert linearization, and the Export Land Model. The Oil Drum had over 25 online contributors from all around the globe. In 2013, the site ceased publishing new articles. As of October 2016, the site continues to function as an archive. The Oil Drum was rated one of the top five sustainability blogs of 2007 by Nielsen Netratings, and was read by a diverse collection of public figures, including Roscoe Bartlett, Paul Krugman, James Howard Kunstler, Richard Rainwater, and Radiohead. In 2008, the site received the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education from the U.S. chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO). The Oil Drum was started in March 2005 by Kyle Saunders (username "Prof. Goose"), a professor of political science at Colorado State University, and Dave Summers (username "Heading Out"), a professor of mining engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology (then known as University of Missouri-Rolla). The site first rose to prominence following its coverage of the impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on oil and gas production. The staff grew by dozens and became well known for rigorous, quantitative analysis of energy production and consumption. A notable example is former editor Stuart Staniford's analysis of the depletion of Saudi Arabia's Ghawar oil field (Depletion Levels in Ghawar). The site started out on the Blogger platform, moved to Scoop in August 2005, and to Drupal in December 2006. In 2013, The Oil Drum announced that it would stop publishing new content and would turn into an archive resource. Reasons cited for this change include server costs and a dwindling number of contributors of high-quality content. Other sources claimed that the site was archived to prevent further embarrassment to contributors as global oil production continued to increase.

References

External links The Oil Drum "The Oil Drum: $100 a Barrel Quickens the Beat" - Interview with The Oil Drum editor Nate Hagens, January 7, 2008. "The Oil Drum, peak oil and why some good blogs don’t last" - Retrospective look at The Oil Drum and the circumstances leading to its shutdown, August 29, 2013.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Oil Drum

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Oil Drum claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Oil Drum before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Oil Drum ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Oil Drum

In research: The Oil Drum appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Oil Drum in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Oil Drum is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American environmental websites, Economics websites, Energy economics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Oil Drum outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Oil Drum in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Oil Drum means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Oil Drum out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Oil Drum in simple terms?

Why does The Oil Drum matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Oil Drum?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Oil Drum.