FX Looks Left to Peak at Oil
Energy apocalypse is one big worst-case
scenario
By Dan Gainor [1]
June 6, 2005
It
probably will be viewed as the worst disaster on American soil,
ever.
No, thats not a review of the new FX Networks movie,
Oil Storm, though it could be. Instead, its a comment from one of
the characters in the film about the seemingly endless stream of
worst-case scenarios the film ties together to create an energy
cataclysm in 2005 and 2006.
The movie had its initial airing Sunday, June 5, 2005,
in back-to-back broadcasts. The film was designed as a mock-umentary,
looking back on the series of catastrophes that piled on top of one
another.
And it was quite a list. It managed to touch on a wide
variety of left-wing apocalypse now theories weather, war,
terrorism, China becoming the dominant economic power, that
President George Bush will use martial law and the idea that oil
production has peaked. Peak oil is one of the principle beliefs of
the radical left, despite the fact that the oil industry continues
to find new oil reserves and improve the ability to access
hard-to-get oil and gas.
Heres just a sampling of the catastrophes packed into
two hours: A Category 4 hurricane nearly wiped out the city of New
Orleans, devastating the oil facilities at Port Fourchon, 70 miles
to the southwest. Then, U.S. oil was routed to Houston, where fog
prevented ships from moving. Once the fog lifted, the new
Bush-appointed energy czar ordered accelerated processing, which
resulted in two container ships colliding and exploding. Next, the
United States had to rely on Saudi Arabia for oil and terrorists
struck first killing oil workers and then destroying two key Saudi
oil facilities.
That was barely the beginning. The rising gas prices
resulted in thousands of deaths, a U.S. military expedition to the
Middle East, a depression worse than the Great Depression and
martial law across America.
The movie placed much of the blame on the real life
Bush presidency. An administration oil czar, a former Soviet
communist official, spoke one of the unsubtle attacks on the current
war in Iraq. There was a budget crisis because there was less money
coming in. There was more money that needed to be paid for the oil
that did come in because the prices had gone through the roof and at
the same time the American government has to maintain troops in Iraq
and send more troops to Saudi Arabia. This is not cheap.
Another character immediately repeated the same
argument: America was spending over a $1 billion a day and had
130,000 troops in Iraq. Everybody knew that the American economy
could not sustain a second large scale military force.
Gas prices rose steadily throughout the show, first
leveling off about $5 per gallon. The movie never mentioned that
Europe has survived similar gas prices, caused by massive European
taxes. But just to make sure things looked crazy, the movies U.S.
prices hit more than $8 per gallon.
The writers used this oil platform as a way to
criticize the Bush administration, the Iraq war and Americas
reliance on oil. How can we give oil that much power over our
lives? asked one woman, whose family owned a gas station. Similar
sentiments were echoed by a farmer who criticized lost farm price
supports. At a rally, he and other supporters chanted Food not
oil, even though large farms are dependent on fuel for planting,
harvesting and transporting crops to market.
FX took a position on this movie similar to the
Discovery Channels on its disaster movie, Supervolcano. Both
networks tried to make the shows seem plausible, even though they
were far from it. According to FX: Oil Storm will look at a series
of natural and man-made disasters which interrupt the flow of oil to
the United States, creating a huge set of crises and dramatically
changing our way of life. Oil Storm changes the form of the
traditional disaster movie, as it will be designed to be an
accurate, thought-provoking and serious portrayal of what would
potentially happen if Americas oil supply were cut off.
FX is the network that is bringing anti-food industry
filmmaker Morgan Spurlock to TV with his new show 30 Days.
Spurlock is best known for eating mountains of McDonalds food,
stopping exercise and then making a movie about how sick he got
called Supersize Me. The network also receives a great deal of
criticism for the sex and violence in its popular police drama The
Shield.
Oil Storm delivered that same level of over-the-top
television. The story focused mostly on ordinary people and how they
would deal with the devastation. One family had to cope with the
loss of their son killed defending Saudi oil facilities. Another
woman was unable to help her mother, who froze to death for lack of
heating oil. Viewers watched as character after character criticized
the government and the fictional Bush leadership.
Throughout the movie, the network warned viewers that
it wasnt real and that this program is for entertainment purposes
only. Oil Storm was the kind of program that needed a reminder
that it really was entertainment.
Oil Storm [2] showed gas prices skyrocketing after a series of random events.