Weekend Watch: Lessons of Darkness – Werner Herzog’s documentary on the Kuwuait oil fires

Brian Zinchuk

Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online

Lessons of Darkness. Werner Herzog/YouTube

There’s very little talking in this one, but you might recognize the voice. It’s Werner Herzog. He’s the old guy in the Mandalorian who says, “I would like to see the baby.” Hearing him quote the Book of Revelations is spooky, to say the least.

Herzog is an accomplished documentary filmmaker, and this is one of his works from 1992. If you watch closely, you’ll see Canada’s Safety Boss. In just 200 days, the Safety Boss team brought 180 wells under control – outperforming all other crews in the field including such industry legends at Red Adair and Boots & Coots. That’s about a quarter of the over 700 oilwells set on fire by the retreating Iraqi army in 1991.

I once interviewed Terry Dunn from North Battleford who worked with one of the companies who fought these fires. I think it was Safety Boss. Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s no longer with us. He died in 2018 at the age of 64. I didn’t recognize him in this video, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there. It would be hard to tell.

There’s lots of interesting helicopter views, from a time before everyone had their own quadcopter drone.

Like last week, be warned, there’s dead bodies seen. And they blow stuff up. There’s a lot of dynamite.

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