Crude Impact: A Peak Oil Primer

Crude Impact, director James Wood's debut documentary, shines a sobering, detailed light on all the issues surrounding the world's increasing dependence on petroleum and petroleum-based products.

Warning: this film is not for the pessimistic. The audience at Cleveland's International Film Festival sat in stunned silence as credits rolled, seemingly unable to fully process the multitude of data presented. It's nominated for and winning many awards across the festival circuit, including a Social Justice Award at the 22nd Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Though Wood offers myriad facts in easily-digested pieces throughout the movie, the cumulative effect befits continued use of a dining analogy. By the end of the movie we're stuffed and uncomfortable. Processing is difficult. Heartburn, inevitable. If anything, the film suffers from being too broad in scope and simultaneously incredibly detailed.

It's simply too much to digest.

Visually engaging, with cutaways to archival footage, Crude Impact has some surprisingly amusing moments. The interviews with over 30 experts are outstanding. Particularly interesting is Guy Caruso, former Administrator of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) under President Bush. All are used to full effect, discussing the impact of oil consumption on humanity, the earth, marine life, population and the global economy.

However, more concise editing and paring away at subject matter is needed. At approximately 90 minutes, the film's more salient points begin to blur.

Crude Impact explores all of these areas, and more: how we came to be dependent on oil, OPEC's practices, the oil industry's subsidizing by the American government, our shared future as oil supply dwindles while demand increases, and practical ways we can begin to make a difference.

As with An Inconvenient Truth, the realities found within Crude Impact are hard-hitting. From an environmental standpoint, damage done to places like Ecuador and Niger are irreversible and horrifying. In Ecuador, Texaco discarded traditional safety practices. Instead of drilling underground to deposit toxic waste created during petroleum processing, they simply dumped it. Waters polluted, Amazon rainforest gutted, natives suffering from huge increases in cancer and Texaco's long gone.

Costs to the environment and human lives are nearly incalculable.

According to the film, from 1962 until 1992, Texaco dumped 18 billion gallons of waste water with 2% crude oil into the environment. Which is the equivalent of 30 times the oil dumped during the Exxon Valdez accident.

In Ogoniland, part of the Niger Delta, Shell's practices caught the attention of Ken Saro-Wiwa. A local, he organized protests against them. In what the film depicts as a kangaroo-court environment, Saro-Wiwa was summarily tried, found guilty of crimes, and executed.

Both these stories would make excellent stand-alone documentaries. However, Crude Impact covers numerous issues, including Hubbert's story about America's production of oil peaking in the 1970's, China's increasing demand (growing by 20 percent in 1995 alone), our world's endless, seemingly needless search for "bigger and better" and how it impacts oil consumption, and unsustainable population growth.

Despite the film's extreme breadth and depth, it's a wonderful addition to an increasing pile of documentaries exploring peak oil. Distributed by Vista Clara films, the dvd can be purchased here .