Review: A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

• Oil from the earth is the outcome of many millions of years of geological history.
• In all of geological time, oil was formed only once.  "We're using this stuff up over one or two centuries."
• One barrel of oil will produce as much (energy) work as 12 people working all year.
• Oil has been so cheaply valued that at current prices, investing $1 gets back 25,000 hours of human labor. 
  

We Use It For Everything surveys how much oil has done and is doing for humankind.

• Ninety-eight percent of transportation energy comes from oil.
  
• Increased food production through the use of fertilizers and machinery has led to the rapid increase of world population.
• Oil provides the building blocks for many products, such as chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals.
  

• Film clips of period advertising laud the products that use oil.
  
• Residents of these boom areas describe how oil built their economies and gave them a place on the world stage. 
• Black-and-white footage shows the boom in full swing.  Oil wells crowd a field, wells spout and spray oil, and oilfield workers are covered in slick, black oil.  
• Fast forwarding to the present, Crude Awakening pans across these places in color to view them as they are today.  Cluttered with the profiles of abandoned machinery, they are ugly, wasted, hazardous and unsafe.
  

• The Russians beat the Germans in WWII because they had access to a fully sourced supply of oil.
• Oil is a catalyst for war.  It fuels and prolongs war. 
• According to Terry Lynn Kari, a political scientist at Stanford University, the struggle in Darfur is in part a struggle for oil.  The government is displacing people in the south because it wants the oil revenues from the region.  
• Oil has been a source of social instability and given the waning supply of oil and our appetite for it, oil will continue to fuel instability.  
• Oil creates conditions for conflict, instead of peace.
  

• The more oil producers extract in a year, the more they are allowed to draw on their reserves and extract the following year.
• OPEC countries have exaggerated the amount of their reserves. They have announced enormous increases in reserves to protect their production quota.  These numbers have not changed.
• At the end of the year, the reserve amounts are the same as they were in the beginning of the year before some reserve oil was extracted, making the public data on oil reserves misleading.
  

• Oil life span for a given region involves two components:  Rate of Discovery and Rate of Production.  After oil is first discovered in a region, the rate at which oil is discovered follows a bell curve, rising to a peak and then falling to zero.  Rate of production follows rate of discovery, but evinces the same bell curve to reach full depletion somewhat later than the Rate of Discovery goes to zero.
• In 1956, Dr. M.K. Hubbert predicted the US would reach its peak within 10-15 years.  He predicted world supply would reach its peak about the turn of the century.  
• U.S oil production reached its peak in December 1970 as Hubbert predicted.  Today 58 oil-producing countries are producing less oil, showing they have passed their peak.  
• Oil producers are investing in tar sand extraction, which indicates that free-flowing wells are drying up.  Extracting oil from tar sand is more difficult and uses more natural gas energy to produce the oil than the energy it supplies. 
• New technologies for finding and producing oil merely result in using up the oil faster. 
  

An Insatiable Demand reminds us of the growing competition for oil.

• Worldwide demand for oil is growing as supplies decrease. 
• China with its booming economy is rapidly increasing its oil use and demand. 
• As India's standard of living rises, so does its use of oil.
• Why shouldn't other parts of the world have what Westerners have?
  

Our profligate use of oil is leading to The End of the American Dream.  The sooner we adapt our culture to declining oil supplies, the better.

• The U.S. uses 25 percent of world oil production, but only has 2 percent of the supply. 
• Even though we in the U.S. complain and obsess about the high cost of gasoline, gas is actually very cheap.  At $3.20 a gallon, gas costs about 20 cents a cup and is non-renewable.  A gallon of coffee from Starbucks costs about $50 a gallon and is renewable.  
• Gas needs to be priced more realistically to deal with a decreasing supply of a non-renewable resource.
• If we wait until everyone is onboard to do something about an oil crash, we will suffer serious economic consequences.  If we anticipate the end of oil by 10 years, we will sustain some economic consequences.  If we begin dealing with it 20 years before it happens, we can avoid economic consequences.  We are nearing the 20-year point.
• It will be difficult to address a potential oil crash politically because initially it may mean slowing down the economy.  Politicians who bring bad news are frequently not elected.
  

Our tremendous talent for discovering, producing and using oil may make us a Victim of Success.

• The policy of the Bush administration to secure more oil is to democratize unstable countries.  This makes us dependent on some very unstable governments.
• Two options are open to us.  1) Militarize the taking the oil--accept that we will be in war after war to get oil.  2) Prepare for the end of cheap oil.  Invest in new technologies that are cleaner and safer and that have less detrimental effects.
• Unlike European cities, U.S. cities are too spread out.  With diminishing oil supplies, they need to be rebuilt.
• The time and energy to deal with an oil crash are running out.
• To buy time, we must have a very vigorous energy conservation program.  Since the U.S. uses a quarter of the world oil supply, it needs to take a lead.
• We should challenge and support scientists and engineers to help us kick our oil habit.
  

Technology to the Rescue overviews the current energy technologies that are being pushed as a replacement or supplement to oil and finds all have problems associated with them.

• A hydrogen economy is conceptually a good idea, but has major challenges. There is no hydrogen infrastructure to deliver and produce hydrogen, and conversely, there is insufficient hydrogen production to warrant building an infrastructure.  Hydrogen production, delivery and infrastructure need substantial technological breakthroughs that may take 30 to 50 years to develop before they are viable.  It currently takes more energy to make hydrogen than hydrogen produces.
• Biomass solutions are inefficient and can't produce sufficient quantities of energy. The energy inputs of fossil fuel are more than the energy produced. Using so much land space to produce biomass may increase world hunger.
• To produce enough nuclear energy to replace energy from oil would require construction of 10,000 new nuclear reactors that would be expensive to maintain.  This would exhaust worldwide reserves of uranium-235 in one or two decades.  Nuclear reactors would be expensive to maintain, would produce dangerous nuclear waste, and may be the targets of terrorist activity.
• Production of wind energy requires large amounts of land and will never be able to contribute more than a small fraction of the required energy supply. 
• Solar energy could provide sufficient energy, but would be expensive and presents a huge technological challenge.  To generate the same amount of energy we currently use would require a land area half the size of the state of California. 
• There are lots of ideas around, but we are not doing the necessary research to test and develop them.
  

What will Life After the Peak be like?

• We won't go back to a life centered on agriculture, but we cannot maintain the lifestyle we have now.
• Population will likely decrease.
• Only the elite will have cars and travel by air.
• Our mindsets can't comprehend what's occurring, because something like this has never happened before.
• We will have to adapt to a new lifestyle.
• Human ingenuity, which has overcome many obstacles, may become engaged.
  

Written, produced, and directed by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, A Crude Awakening premiered on April 17 on the Sundance channel, which isn't available to many people.  Given the importance of the topic and the quality of the presentation, Crude Awakening should be distributed through other sources to reach a wider audience.  Crude Awakening ranks in importance with the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which details the climate changing results of our love affair with oil.

One problem I had with the presentation of A Crude Awakening is the use of white print for captions and translations.  The white print was hard to read, especially when it was small, because it doesn't contrast enough with the background.  I may have noticed this more since I was reviewing the program and was paying extra attention to ascertaining the credentials of the people who were providing information.

Our use of oil has accomplished much in giving us a better and fuller life.  Oil has served us so well that we are on the way to exploiting it to extinction.  Our misuse has been done without foreknowledge of the consequences.  Now that we have evidence of the imminence of an oil crash, we must change our course.  Crude Awakening provides a transfusion of knowledge that can help push us toward taking the necessary courageous steps toward change.

Verie Sandborg worked in environmental, health and safety management at Baxter International for more than 20 years.  She currently consults part-time on environmental, health and safety issues.