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Preface

The Oil Economists' Handbook grew out of British Petroleum's Statistical Review of the World Oil Industry. In the mid-1970s, when the author was editor of the Review, a complete revision was undertaken of the oil and energy consumption data from 1955. These twenty-year series of data, together with other data from the Review and considerable back-up material, formed the statistical section of the first edition of the Oil Economists' Handbook which was published in 1977. The second, third and fourth editions of the Oil Economists' Handbook increased both in scope and size from the first edition.

This fifth edition is a departure from the previous editions, with publication in two volumes due to considerable expansion of the Handbook. Volume 1 is devoted entirely to statistics consisting of 415 tables divided into 20 sections. Volume 2 comprises the Dictionary of Terms, the Chronology and the Directory. Although the material from the BP Statistical Reviews of the World Oil Industry (now World Energy) over the last 30 years is now heavily diluted, it is nevertheless maintained in some of the key data series over the period 1955 to 1987. The publishers are grateful to British Petroleum for permission to use information from the Review and from its companion review, BP Review of World Gas.

A feature of the Dictionary section, taken together with the tabulated data, is the direction given to the availability, timeliness and, most importantly, the sources of the data. In a handbook it is not of course possible to provide current statistics. The good coverage of the historical statistics, which are usually more difficult to obtain than the current data, is likely to be a time-saving feature.

The Chronology section is composed of events, technical and commercial, which have had a significant impact on the oil and energy business. It provides a quick history and may be found useful for understanding discontinuities in time series in the statistical section.

A new section in the fifth edition is the 46 tables providing extensive data on oil companies' market shares. This section, together with the extensive address list, will be of use to market researchers. There is again improved coverage of oil and energy prices and a new section on oil stocks. In the Dictionary there is extensive reference to material not listed in many of the energy databanks.

The previous editions of the Oil Economists' Handbook have been well received by oil and energy economists. The Handbook has been used for reference, for basic data when forecasting, as a substitute textbook of oil economics and as a standard work in reference libraries

Author: G. Jenkins