A Crude Awakening (2006)

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash is a documentary film which premiered in 2006. Here is some basic information about it:

** Writers and directors: Basil Gelpke and Raymond McCormick

** Country of origin: Switzerland

** Released on DVD in 2008

** Run time: ca 82 minutes

The film is in English for most of the time. There are a few cases where another language is spoken. When this happens, the statement is covered by English subtitles.

Many persons are interviewed in the film. Here are the names (in alphabetical order):

Wade Adams – a researcher

Abdul Samad Al-Awadi – an oil consultant

Fadhil Al-Chalabi – a former OPEC executive

Roscoe Bartlett (born 1926) – a member of the US Congress 1993-2013

Robert Bottome – an economist

Colin J. Campbell – an oil geologist

Marcello Colitti – a former executive of ENI

Alberto Quiros Corrado – Allied Consulting

Mir-Babajev Mir-Jusiv Fazilogli – a historian

Daniele Ganser – a historian

David L. Goodstein – professor of physics

Richard Heinberg – an American journalist

Terry Lynn Karl – professor of political science, Stanford University

Franklin M. Orr, Jr. – professor

Sherry Phillips – Mayor of McCamey, Texas

Matthew David Savinar – an attorney

Matthew Simmons (1943-2010) – energy advisor to US President George W. Bush

Alfred M. Spormann – professor of environmental microbiology

Manouchehr Takin – a petroleum analyst

Louis Woodward – an oil entrepreneur

Gary Yanibelli – a Hummer car salesman

Archive footage is used between the talking heads. Archive footage is used to show us historical events and to show us old interviews with public figures.

The title of the film is a pun based on the English expression a rude awakening, which means a surprising and unpleasant discovery. Here is an example: “If you think there is such a thing as a free lunch, then you are in for a rude awakening!”

The starting point (or the inspiration) for the film is the US geologist Marion King Hubbert (1903-1989) and his theory of peak oil which he presented in 1956.

The theory says extraction of oil can be illustrated by a bell-shaped curve. A few years later, this curve will be followed by another bell-shaped curve which illustrates the consumption of oil.

The participants talk about the oil industry: the past, the present, and the future of the oil industry. Many of them issue a warning that the amount of oil that can be extracted and consumed is decreasing rapidly. You could use this fact to say that this film is filled with doom and gloom.

What do reviewers say about this film? Here are the results of two review aggregators:

78 per cent = IMDb

79 per cent = Rotten Tomatoes (the critics)

84 per cent = Rotten Tomatoes (the audience)

On the US version of Amazon there are at the moment more than 80 reviews of this product. The average rating is 4.3 stars.

As you can see, the ratings are good, but not great. They hover around four stars on Amazon. If you ask me, this rating is quite appropriate. Why?

This film offers interesting and useful information about the oil industry, but it is has some flaws as well. Let me explain:

# 1. The clips are too short. We jump from one person to the next too quickly. I would like to see a participant say more than one sentence before the two directors cut him off and jump to another participant or another aspect of the general topic.

# 2. At least one participant makes a statement that is totally false. Terry Lynn Karl begins a statement by saying “If you look at our first wars, World War One and World War Two…”

Terry Lynn Karl is professor of political science at Stanford University. She should know better. The US was involved in numerous wars before World war One.

# 3. By now the film is more than ten years old and in some respects it seems that it has become obsolete. Its predictions about the future has been overtaken by reality. Here is one example: McCamey, Texas, is presented as a ghost town, but it seems this place is not a ghost town anymore.

I like this film and I want to give it a good rating, but as you can see, there are some flaws, which cannot be ignored. I have to remove one star because of these flaws. Therefore I think it deserves a rating of four stars.

*****