The Oil Drum

Cheers...and here's some stuff to chew on:

Schlumberger: US Oil Demand 21.642M B/D, Highest Ever in Week. (link) Update [2005-12-15 0:6:13 by Prof. Goose]: Link fixed!

Exxon: Oil demand to rise 50%...Energy industry can supply what's needed, company says. (link)

Participate.net: Syriana talk. (link)

John Robb (Global Guerrillas): "Clear and Hold?"  The current US approach in Iraq is to clear areas of insurgent activity and hold them to prevent their return. This is a redux of a 20th Century counter-insurgency method called oil spots (a variant is strategic hamlets). (link)

US News and World Report (not necessarily a peak energy publication!!): The Big Chill, A winter fuel crisis of high prices and shortages could darken homes and factories. (link)

Have you seen it? What did you think?

Previous discussions here.

Maybe it is the onset of winter and people like gathering inside more to decompress and escape the weather, but this week is movie week here at TOD: NYC.

On Monday, I hosted a screening of the new Walmart movie which clearly painted a picture of a truly evil corporation that sucks the life out of small towns, relying on government subsidies, illegal immigrant labor, not paying workers a living wage here or abroad, all in the name of low prices. Good posts on the film can be found at Startsandfits, Baloghblog before and after with link of rare appearance on TV.

Yesterday I went to see Syriana, which Super G wrote about earlier today and I summarize some additional points in a comment to his post. I think this film will wake up some people, but it does not take on PO head on.

There remains one film that does address PO and the centrality of the automobile in a very direct way that remains the film of choice for spreading the word about Peak Oil - The End Of Suburbia. On Sunday at 1pm, I will be showing EOS in my home borough of Staten Island at the Unitarian Universalist Church. Please tell any friends who haven't seen it to come watch it there. Or tell them to rent it on Netflix!

I recently saw Syriana, which is going to be in theaters "everywhere" starting on Friday. This will not be a comprehensive movie review, just a few thoughts about the film. I should say that the opinions here do not reflect the official views of The Oil Drum, only my personal thoughts.

This is a great looking, well-acted, big budget Hollywood production with some of the biggest movie stars around. It was directed by Steven Gaghan (who wrote the screenplay for Traffic) and written by Gaghan and Robert Baer, a former CIA agent. Some of the movie is based loosely on Baer's non-fiction book See No Evil. If you come to this movie expecting an engaging politicial thriller, you will enjoy yourself. If you are expecting this movie to change the way everyday people think about the impact of oil on our lives, you will be disappointed.

Syriana examines our dependence on foreign oil from several interwoven perspectives, much like Traffic explored the U.S. "War on Drugs". The interconnected storylines feature an over-the-hill CIA agent (George Clooney), an ambitious and opportunistic energy analyst (Matt Damon), a lawyer for large U.S. oil company (Jeffrey Wright), a reform-minded Arabian prince (Alexander Siddig), and two Pakistani men who are laid off from their jobs in an Arabian oil field. If you think this plot sounds complicated, you are right. The plot of Traffic was similarly complex, but made excellent use of cinematographic effects to delinate the different storylines. Syriana does not use such techniques, and the result is a movie that is hard to follow. It strikes me as the kind of movie that is more enjoyable after a second viewing, but having only seen it once, I cannot say for sure.

Spoilers below the fold.

Today, Participate.net launches its campaign for Syriana: Oil Change, the soon to be released "oil" movie with George Clooney and Matt Damon, has a community website/blog where actors, producers, guest bloggers and regular visitors can post and discuss things related to the subject of the movie.

Last night I saw a trailer for the movie Syriana. Much like The Deal and Oil Storm before it, Syriana is a movie in which bad things happen as a result of fuel shortages. Unlike those two movies, however, Syriana is a big budget Warner Brothers film starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper and a bunch of other big names.

Perhaps more interesting than the movie itself is the fact that it's affilated with a new movie production company called Participant Productions, which also brings us the website Participate.net.