To the casual observer, the oil business seems constant and unchanging. The familiarity of the oil industry's retail outlets masks extraordinary changes in how the industry engages in its four primary sectors of activity: finding and producing crude oil, transportation, refining, and marketing. In his new book, noted energy economist Dr. Samuel A. Van Vactor chronicles the oil industry's transformation over the last century and discusses the future of an industry that has been pronounced dead or dying by its critics on numerous occasions since the early development of coal and the steam...