Best Documentary Films about Oil (and Gas)

The globe-spanning story of the oil industry from the first strikes of the 19th century through the Gulf War. The industry's colorful characters and oil's key role in 20th century history are brought to life by participants and historians.

The film's central story follows a small group of American explorers at Dallas-based oil company Kosmos Energy. Between 2007 and 2011, with unprecedented, independent access, Big Men's two-person crew filmed inside the oil company as Kosmos and its partners discovered and developed the first commercial oil field in Ghana's history. Simultaneously the crew filmed in the swamps of Nigeria's Niger Delta, following the exploits of a militant gang to reveal another side of the economy of oil: people trying to profit in any way possible, because they've given up on waiting for the money to trickle down. So what happens when a group of hungry people discover a massive and exquisitely rare pot of gold in one of the poorest places on earth?

This film surveys the disaster of the Kuwaiti oil fields in flames, with little narration and scarcely any interviews. Hell on Earth is presented in such transcendent visions and music that one can only be fascinated by it.

The idyllic life of a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon is disrupted when the tranquility of the bayou is broken by an oil well drilling near his home.

A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall.

What will it really take, to transition from oil and coal, to the energies of tomorrow? SWITCH goes where no film has gone before, deep into the world's most restricted energy sites, to depoliticize competing power sources, make the technical accessible, and discover the truth of our energy future. Test audiences have raved, calling it, 'The most important energy film since An Inconvenient Truth.'

The atomic bomb and meltdowns like Fukushima have made nuclear power synonymous with global disaster. But what if we've got nuclear power wrong?

With cries from Washington for more domestic gas and oil production, the citizens of Garfield County, CO, find themselves in the path of an unstoppable rush to drill which threatens to destroy their health, homes, and community.

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim follows Al Gore on the lecture circuit, as the former presidential candidate campaigns to raise public awareness of the dangers of global warming and calls for immediate action to curb its destructive effects on the environment.

Marty Callaghan's Synopsis: Except for the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaigns, the extensive combat operations in the Middle East during World War I have been largely overlooked in documentary programs. Given the historical significance of the Ottoman Empire's demise in 1918, and the ongoing importance of Middle Eastern oil reserves to Western economies, a close study of this conflict provides two important lessons: 1. The Treaty of Versailles, agreed to by the Western Powers in 1919, paved the way for military and political chaos in the Middle East, which continues to this very day. 2. Oil reserves in the Middle East became an important strategic concern for Western Powers, helping to justify their economic, diplomatic and military interference in the region. After the end of World War I, most of the Ottoman Empire was carved up into "spheres of influence", controlled mostly by the British and French. The remaining territories became the modern state of Turkey in 1923 - after a five-year struggle by Turkish nationalists against Western domination. With little regard for cultural, historical, religious and demographic considerations, the West sponsored the creation of several new nations: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Thus, a "tinderbox" was built from Western greed, igniting a multitude of wars, revolts, coups and military occupations that truly have made the defeat of the Ottoman Empire little more than a hollow victory.

An edgy David vs. Goliath documentary, LUBE JOB pits America's revered seafood industry against its mighty oil and gas empire, revealing how one industry is killing the other and an age-old way of life.

Despite the valuable crude oil that flows from the ground beneath their feet, the impoverished villagers in the Niger Delta wage a daily struggle to survive. This Seattle-made documentary journeys to the region to examine the complex powder keg situation that could have drastic local and global effects.

The notion that oil motivates America's military engagements in the Middle East is often disregarded as nonsense or mere conspiracy theory. In Blood and Oil, bestselling author and Nation magazine defense correspondent Michael T. Klare challenges this conventional wisdom and corrects the historical record. The film unearths declassified documents and highlights forgotten passages in prominent presidential doctrines to show how concerns about oil have been at the core of American foreign policy for more than 60 years -- rendering our contemporary energy and military policies virtually indistinguishable. In the end, Blood and Oil calls for a radical re-thinking of US energy policy, warning that unless we change direction, we stand to be drawn into one oil war after another as the global hunt for diminishing world petroleum supplies accelerates.

A theatrical documentary on the planet's dwindling oil resources.

This film shows the beauty and grandeur of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge against the political backdrop of oil exploration and development, and its impact upon Alaska Natives and the land

"Haynesville: A Nation's Hunt for an Energy Future" takes place in the Louisiana backwoods, and follows the momentous discovery of the largest natural gas field in the United States (and maybe the world). The film examines the historic find (a formation called the "Haynesville Shale") from the personal level as well as from the larger perspective of the current energy picture and pending energy future. As the Haynesville Shale boom erupts, the film focuses on three lives caught in the middle of the find: A single mom takes up the defense of her community's environmental protections, an African American preacher attempts to use the riches to build a school for his congregants and a salt-of-the-earth, self-described "country boy" finds himself conflicted as he weighs losing his pristine land to an oil company's offer to make him a millionaire. From a broader perspective, "Haynesville" explores the current energy situation and what something the scale of the Haynesville (170 trillion cubic feet or the equivalent of 28 billion barrels of oil) could mean for the energy picture in the United States. The new, updated version of the film looks deeper into the lives of Mike, Kassi and Reegis. The "Haynesville" update also sheds new light on the natural gas discussion and its place in the clean energy future.

The documentary highlights the influence that major corporations, including ExxonMobil, wield over individual countries' governments, media, and citizens, and examines their connections to global warming. As the adverse effects of the unsustainable surge in fossil fuel use continue to destabilize the climate, ExxonMobil escalates production and global influence to maximize profits, disregarding climate science and long-term statistical trends.

The modern suburbs have ultimately become an unsustainable way of living. They were originally developed in an era of cheap oil, when the automobile became the center of the way people lived and an era when people wanted to escape the inner city to a more pastoral or rural way of life. However the suburbs quickly evolved into a merely a place to live that had neither the benefits of rural or urban life, and where one was reliant on an automobile both to travel elsewhere and even travel within the neighborhood. The suburbs are not only dependent upon cheap energy, but also reliable energy. The reliability of energy is becoming less so as demonstrated by the multi-day blackout of the North American Eastern Seaboard starting on August 14, 2003. Part of the problem of getting out of the suburban mentality is that a generation has grown up believing it to be a normal way of life, and a life of entitlement, which they will not give up without a fight. But many developers and planners and some of the general public understand the want and need to make the way the collective we live in a more walkable and humanistic manner.

A documentary on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion as seen through the eyes of oil executives, survivors and Gulf Coast residents who experienced it first-hand and then were left to pick up the pieces while the world moved on.

On April 20th, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off the Gulf of Mexico taking the lives of 11 workers and sank as millions of barrels of oil poured into the ocean creating one of the worst environmental disasters in history. The fate of the Gulf is still largely unknown. Dirty Energy tells the personal story of those directly affected by the spill and are now struggling to rebuild their lives amidst the economic devastation and long-term health risks. Still today, the people of the Gulf are fighting for their livelihoods and are desperately struggling to preserve their endangered way of life. This is their story.

The Oil Barons, Wildcatters, and roughnecks and their long struggle to feed America's ferocious oil appetite. Step inside the oil culture to understand just how the USA became so addicted and why Houston believes we must go "Green" for a secure domestic energy future.

More than 6.5 billion people today are completely dependent on oil for food, energy, plastics, and chemicals. Population growth is on a collision course with the inevitable depletion of oil production. Bush's 'war on terror' was directed at the places where ¾ of the world's remaining oil and natural gas are located. The documentary analyzes the development of several global events starting at the beginning of the century (mainly after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001) from the perspective of oil and oil regions. It brings an unconventional point of view to the reasons, aspects, and motives of this war and to the direction of contemporary American foreign policy.

A documentary that examines the April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

A documentary that tells the story of America's addiction to oil, from its corporate conspiracy beginnings to its current monopoly today, and explains clearly and simply how we can end it - and finally win choice at the pump.

Blind Spot is a documentary film that illustrates the current oil and energy crisis that our world is facing. Whatever measures of ignorance, greed, wishful thinking, we have put ourselves at a crossroad, which offers two paths with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels we will choke the life out of the planet and if we don't our way of life will collapse.