A movie about the oil industry – and us.
Oil is a finite resource, we all know that, but are we being told the truth by governments and big business about just how finite these resources really are?
Movie makers, Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, interviewed oil industry experts and government officials from all over the world in order to gain an insight into this very secretive, protected and sometimes dangerous world of oil production. Their documentary film, A CRUDE AWAKENING, is a record of their chilling findings.
As the film shows, you needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to see a connection between America’s current obsessions with the Middle East and national security, and the world’s looming oil crisis.
It seems that as our reserves dwindle, oil companies are having to obtain their supplies from increasingly hostile nations, where both infrastructure and operations are being constantly threatened and often attacked by fringe elements and militants. Is this what lies ahead for us, unpredictable supplies and ever-higher prices?
This movie, a documentary, highlights some of these difficulties and how those nations who are sitting on the world’s biggest oil reserves are regularly overestimating their reserves. Overestimating their reserves in this way entitles them to produce a bigger percentage of their national reserves per annum according to OPEC regulations. It is ironic that as a finite reserve, those reported reserves never seem to drop year-on-year, even though those nations have extracted a whole years worth of oil from their resources since their last report. Even the oil experts see through this façade, but the sham goes on.
The message that this movie conveys to us car drivers and consumers of products that use oil in their manufacturing process, is that, we had better come up with an alternative source of fuel to power our motor cars, ships, planes and trains, because our earthly supplies are going to run out sooner than most expect. So why wait for the critical reserve levels to be reached before attempting to find the solution? Act now. Should British industry come up with the solution before other nations do, then this nation would eliminate a huge import bill, replacing it instead with an income stream.
This movie drives home the urgency of the situation and brings into sharp perspective the economic chaos that will inevitably result when this finite resource does eventually run dry. It may be sooner than we are led to believe, so we had better be ready, we had better have an alternative. The truth often hurts, or involves at least some degree of discomfort or adjustment, but a ‘head in the sand’ attitude won’t make the problem go away.
If the makers of this movie want to get their message across, it will serve little purpose in trying to convince the older generation as they are more set in their ways and less likely to want to change. The initiative for finding an alternative source of power lies with our children, and so the Producers and Public Relations agency connected with this movie need to get this film distributed to the schools, colleges, universities and education centres where the next generation of young minds is already at work. Young children in our primary schools, those most likely to be affected by the depletion of oil reserves, are the ideas bank of the future. They are the ones who will take this problem by the scruff of the neck in the years to come, and develop the solution – show the film to them, now.
Perhaps this is also an ideal opportunity for our Government to subsidise the urgent research needed to develop an alternative source of power in Britain now, giving us an unassalible lead in the race to find the solution. What a strategic advantage that would give the nation, not to mention the enormous financial benefit in selling such technology to others. But the impetus for such a development must come from the next generation, forcing the Government to take action, and perhaps A CRUDE AWAKENING will be that impetus. Perhaps.
A CRUDE AWAKENING will be released in UK cinemas on November 9, 2007
For further information, visit: www.oilcrashmovie.com
NOTE:
Vehicle Engineer carried two articles in 2006 by Brian Townsend and Peter Mullins, on the subject of biofuels.
Respected author and journalist Brian Townsend, now living back in his native Scotland, wrote about running our vehicles with fuel produced from corn, maize, sugar cane, claiming that these were some of the buzzwords petrol-heads must become used to. He described how a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in California had discovered that some 200 different microbe strains, living in the guts of termites, converted cellulose rapidly into alcohol without apparently keeling over in a drunken haze.
It is strange to think, he went on, that the liquid most of us enjoy in beers, wines and spirits may one day be the same - though much purer – than that we pour into our car fuel tanks. But, if the answer to the world's fuel problems is in the gut of one of the world's most detested insects – promising endless fuel, low pollution and slower global warming – who wouldn't raise a brimming glass and propose a toast of gratitude?
Peter Mullins in the same issue of Vehicle Engineer predicted that transportation would be using significantly more biodiesel and ethanol from a cocktail of all sorts: plant and animal waste, discarded foodstuffs, corn , soya and palm oil and even from the little known Jatropha tree. In a 2,500-word report, he gave an excellent summing up of the market for biofuels and hydrogen as well.
For further information on these two features, please email: anne@vehicle-engineer.com
|
