We take the petroleum industry for granted these days, a behemoth that powers our cars, heats our homes, literally greases the literal wheels of literal industry, and generally rules our lives even as its price-fixing and environmental degradation make those lives less tenable every day. There is no escape, we're resigned to our fates. But it wasn't always like this! Once upon a time the oil and gas business felt the need to really sell itself to the world. The world being what it is, this means cartoons and comics.


Everybody knows the world beneath us is populated by degenerated subterreanean creatures plaguing mankind with earthquakes, monsters, and mind control rays. But this is also where we get some of our most popular natural resources, like uranium, tungsten, and various hydrocarbonical liquids, solids, and gases, seen here engaging in cartoon-style hijinks.


There's a real need to get as much oil as possible out of those oil fields. Not just for gasoline or industrial solvents, but because it makes money for the oil companies. And if it makes money for the oil companies, it makes money for everybody. That's the trickle-down theory of wealth, if what was trickling was little smeary drops of oil.


It's a good bet that at least one of the dollars in your pocket right now is a California Oil Dollar. Millions of them were printed during oil industry's short dalliance with counterfeiting! Why, just imagine the journey that dollar took from somebody's basement printing press to your pocket to the hardware store to the Secret Service's currency investigation bureau. By the way, they might want to ask you some questions.


Wealth is created out of nothing by this magical substance, which just comes right out of the ground at no cost to anybody, will never ever run out or cause any environmental problems, and is sold at an amazing markup, thereby passing the profits on to, say, the Richfield Oil Corporation, which then spreads it around in various ways at its own discretion. Like, building a downtown Los Angeles tower, for instance.


Let's work together to get more oil out of the ground! Then we can pump it into one of those "horn of plenty" icons that used to be everywhere, and were used as a universal symbol expressing the bounty of nature, before we, uh, started filling them with oil.


You see, blood is forced through your veins by the constant pressure of millions of tons of rock, compressing your arteries and capillaries with the force of... wait, that's not right.


I don't know about your body. MY bodily functions are affected by expanding gases only on very rare occasions. But deep underground? That's where little cartoon fire people and cartoon water people (note the little sailor hat) work together to shove little cartoon petro-people into little tubes.


You only have one heart, a reservoir only has one source of pressure, and if someone - say, Daniel Day-Lewis in a star-making role as a ruthless oilman destroying everything in his quest for wealth - bores a diagonal shaft down into that reservoir thereby "drinking" the "milkshake," that reservoir will be unable to force oil to the surface. And we all know what that means - either 1970s-style gas shortages, or Best Actor and Cinematography Oscars.


Sure, fine, let's all work together. Just curious about one thing. How, exactly, are we normal everyday people reading this corporate information pamphlet supposed to maintain the pressure of vast fields of petroleum resources hundreds and thousands of feet underground?


Well, we can pump water back down into spaces beneath the oil, thereby forcing the oil up, and out, and into the open arms of the oil industry. Sure, maybe it's more trouble than it's worth, and it might cause groundwater contamination and earthquakes. But think of the oil industry's profits, we can't let them "run out of gas," can we?


In the oil fields, this smiling teamwork is called UNIT OPERATION. Here in the 21st century it's called FRACKING, and there aren't quite as many smiles.


This is the ONLY way to get ALL the oil so that Californians can have ALL the good things in life, namely your brand new 1956 Chrysler Behemoth - that's what true conservation and patriotism and conservative patriotism is all about! What are you, some kind of commie?


This web page making fun of a pamphlet, which is based on a film strip, which is taken from an industrial film, which is based on an oil company, has been brought to you by a company which will soon go through a merger, become ARCO, retire the Sinclair Dinosaur, and eventually be owned by BP. Conservation at its best! Or capitalism, whatever.

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