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Oil Apocalypse
A New Documentary from Filmmaker Martin Kent
Press Release
This week, the price of crude oil is trading at a shocking $96 a barrel. By year’s end, analysts predict petroleum will reach $100. And it’s not going to stop there. The world we’ve created runs on oil. But energy experts say the world is running out of oil. Much faster than previously thought. Demand will continue to outpace supplies, shortages are inevitable, and the price will only continue to rise dramatically — causing a ripple effect of disastrous economic, social and political consequences.
On Tuesday night, November 13th, (at 11:00 p.m. EST/PST – 10:00 p.m. C), the History Channel will present Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse, a documentary that Los Angeles-based filmmaker Martin Kent is calling “a wake up call,” about the world’s energy crisis. “We can no longer count on getting all the gasoline we need – and there’s no plan B.”
By plan B, Kent is referring to a coordinated system of alternative energies laid out in his film, that could replace our addiction and dependence on oil, if society mobilizes quickly to make it happen. It’s long been known that oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, that pollutes the environment, and now mankind is coming to realize that it is also most likely causing climate change. With China and India rapidly industrializing, creating an energy-hungry middle class, demand for oil will increase from the world’s current consumption of 84 million barrels a day, to 100 million barrels within the next 5 years. Unfortunately, while oil producers and refiners are scrambling to develop new techniques and sources of production, as yet there are no sure means to meet the growing demand.
Oil Apocalypse presents a terrifying set of scenarios. True to the laws of supply and demand, we are fast approaching the breaking point, when the imbalance could destabilize the economies and infrastructures of virtually every nation on the planet. The worst-case scenario, say experts in the film, is a worldwide depression, which could lead to a world war. Still, they say it’s not too late. But we have to act fast. Says Kent: “My hope is that upon seeing this film, everyone will be inspired to become an energy activist — instead of sitting back and hoping that the scientists and leaders will somehow pull everything together and fix this in the eleventh hour. The time to act is now.”
Energy experts appearing on camera in Oil Apocalypse include authors Richard Heinberg, Matthew Simmons, David Goodstein, Kenneth Deffeyes, Michael Economides and Christine Woodside; Oppenheimer energy analyst Fadel Gheit, PFC Energy chairman J. Robinson West, RAND Corp.’s James Bartis and Congressman Roscoe Bartlett. Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse is a Creative Differences, Inc. production.
Martin Kent is available for interviews and public speaking engagements accompanying a screening of this film. Please contact: LightHouse Public Relations [email protected]
(6 November 2007)
From Rep. Roscoe Barlett’s staff:
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett was interviewed for this documentary about peak oil that will air on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at 11:00 pm Eastern on the History Channel.
www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=251195
A Modest Proposal
Dave Cohen, ASPO-USA
In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote a satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal,” in which he suggested that poor Irish tenant farmers sell their children to be eaten as food to raise money to pay their exorbitant rents. Swift’s ironic proposal was immediately recognized as beyond the pale, but it served to highlight the gross economic inequities prevalent at the time.
In modern times, proposals that U.S. consumers actually reduce their consumption of oil and its refined products have been viewed as almost equally unacceptable, as any politician advocating a serious policy leaning in this direction would no doubt tell you.
The modest proposal presented here calls for implementation of a gasoline tax and a floating cap on American oil consumption. These are two of three energy efficiency options examined in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) study National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency, published in October, 2006. Although to many it will seem akin to America eating its young, we must put on the table a serious solution to the looming, grievous threat to U.S. future prosperity fostered by our dependency on oil imports, if only to focus the debate. Politically palatable, and therefore inadequate, plans, such as President George W. Bush’s “20 in 10” initiative mandating a 20 percent reduction in gasoline consumption by 2017, are not strong enough to solve the imported oil dependency problem. The White House initiative depends on three weak measures: tighter corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards (5 percent); inefficient, limited corn ethanol production; and cellulosic ethanol production (together, 15 percent). A commercially viable cellulosic process does not yet exist.
…Complete energy independence is a myth, and the American way of life is negotiable. Consumers need to understand that they use much more oil than they produce and become fully aware of the perilous, unsustainable road on which the nation is embarked. The oil consumption index lays out a coherent road map for achieving greater energy security in the future.
Note: This is an updated reprint of an article I wrote for the May, 2007 issue of World Energy Monthly Review. A death in the family keeps me busy this week. I will return with a new column next week.
(6 November 2007)
Review: A Crude Awakening
Derek Brower, Prospect
The new film A Crude Awakening suffers from all the deficits of the “peak oil” theory it promotes
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What happens when we run out of oil? Given that almost every aspect of our lives either wholly or partially depends on the steady extraction and refinement of the black stuff, its end is a scary prospect. Forget about air or road travel using the combustion engine. Forget about anything made from plastic or other synthetic fibres. Get ready for a financial meltdown, as petrodollars shrink and the world’s economies contract faster than you can say “alternative energy.”
Or at least this is the kind of fear A Crude Awakening, the latest eco-film to hit the screens, wants its viewers to feel. The film’s premise is that the end is nigh: we have already extracted (or “produced,” as the energy industry misleadingly describes the process) over half of the world’s oil reserves. And as demand continues to rise in line with economic growth, the downward slope on the graph of the remaining reserve is going to get steeper and steeper.
The film has already won a host of awards and is likely to prove popular in Britain. It might even prompt some debate about the world’s addiction to oil. After the success of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, A Crude Awakening will add more momentum to the push for renewable energy.
The problem is that the film’s main argument—that the world is on the verge of an oil crash—is wrong. However entertaining its gallop through the history of oil and its transformation of our way of life, A Crude Awakening ignores a number of its own inconvenient truths along the way.
(November 2007)
Where is that copy of “Rebuttals to Peak Oil Skeptics” now that we need it? Different people have talked about it, but I haven’t seen one. Perhaps it would be good as a Wiki somewhere? -BA
ODAC News – Wed 07 Nov
Douglas Low, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre
Oil / Petrol Prices, US EIA Forecasts
1a/ $100 oil within touching distance (Arabian Business, Wed 07 Nov)
1b/ Average petrol cost at £1 a litre (BBC News, Wed 07 Nov)
1c/ Short-Term Energy Outlook – November (US Energy Information Administration, Tue 06 Nov)
1d/ As Oil Nears $100, Look Out Below (Business Week, Wed 07 Nov)
1e/ What’s behind the jump in oil prices? (Energy Bulletin, Wed 07 Nov)
Peak Oil films – A Crude Awakening and Crude Impact
2a/ A Crude Awakening and Crude Impact – Two Peak Oil Films (ODAC, Mon 05 Nov)
2b/ UK – A CRUDE AWAKENING: THE OIL CRASH TO BE RELEASED ON FRIDAY 9 NOVEMBER
Economy
3a/ Credit card users hurt by squeeze (The Times, Tue 06 Nov)
3b/ Markets fear banks have $1 trillion in toxic debt (The Independent, Tue 06 Nov)
3c/ Anatomy of a credit crisis (The Independent, Tue 06 Nov)
3d/ Plunging markets fear a meltdown (The Telegraph, Tue 06 Nov)
3e/ Why market turmoil will hit us all (The Telegraph, Tue 06 Nov)
Natural Gas – GTL and Nord Stream
4a/ GTL Progress Falters As Developers Weigh Success Of First Wave Projects (Middle East Economic Survey, Tue 06 Nov)
4b/ Sweden raises a new hurdle for German-Russian pipeline (International Herald Tribune, Tue 06 Nov)
Peak Oil in the UK
5/ Monty Don on Peak Oil and Gardening (Transition Culture, Wed 31 Oct)
6/ Peak Oil in the Mainstream Business Press (The Oil Drum: Europe / ‘Energy’, Mon 05 Nov)
Peak Oil in the Saudi Media
7/ Telling the Whole Truth About Oil (Arab News [The Middle East’s Leading English Language Daily], Tue 06 Nov)
Oil Shales
8/ Oil shale prospects (Energy Resources Yahoo Group, Tue 06 Nov)
Biofuels
9/ COMMENT: Biofuels can match oil production (Financial Times, Wed 07 Nov)
IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2007
10a/ Chinese, Indian Growth to Spur Oil `Crunch,’ IEA Says (Bloomberg, Wed 07 Nov)
10b/ Oil Prices: It Gets Worse (Time, Wed 07 Nov)
10c/ World Energy Outlook 2007 – China and India Insights (IEA, Wed 07 Nov)
North Sea Storm
11/ Arctic storm disrupts some North sea fields (Reuters, Wed 07 Nov)
(7 November 2007)
