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An oil well at Signal Hill near Long Beach.

It’s Oil That Makes LA Boil

I never knew I lived in an oil town until I went looking for the concealed infrastructure of fossil fuel production.
by Jonathan S. Blake via Noema on July 30, 2024
Still from 'Chinatown' showing Jack Nicholson taking photo.

“Chinatown” at 50, or Seeing Oil Through Cinema

On the 50th anniversary of “Chinatown” and the beginning of the end of petromodernity.
by Michael Rubenstein via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 8, 2024
Shot of Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio hugging in Killers of the Flower Moon

Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon Describes the Struggles of the Osage People

Here’s why they are still fighting.
by Greg Palast via The Guardian on October 20, 2023
Abandoned Brownwood subdivision, now the Baytown Nature Center, near Houston, Texas.

What Survives

Lacy M. Johnson walks through a nature center near Houston that has reclaimed the land where a neighborhood, sunken by oil extraction and floodwater, once stood.
by Lacy M. Johnson via Emergence Magazine on March 9, 2023
Aerial view of cleanup at ruptured Keystone pipeline that dumped oil into a creek in Washington County, Kansas, Dec. 9, 2022.
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Oil and Oil Spills Have Long Gone Hand in Hand

New technology has facilitated the transportation of oil, but spills remain a risk.
by Nolan Varee via Made By History on January 9, 2023
People cleaning up an oil spill on coastal rocks.
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Unprepared: Lessons From Two Massive Oil Spills

A disastrous oil spill in Alaska and massive rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico revealed a pattern of unsettled standards and inconsistent oversight.
via Retro Report on December 8, 2022
Picture of a man mopping a gas station bathroom floor.

Believe It or Not, Gas Station Bathrooms Used to Be Squeaky Clean. Here's What Changed.

Spotless bathrooms used to be a crucial selling point for gas stations.
by Nathaniel Meyersohn via CNN on June 4, 2022
A line of cars waiting their turn at a filling station in Portland, Oregon, 1973.

The Price of Oil

The history of control and decontrol in the oil market.
by Gregory Brew via Phenomenal World on May 25, 2022
Oil rigs just south of town extract crude for Chevron at sunrise in Taft, California, on July 22, 2008.

How Private Oil Companies Took Over U.S. Energy Security

And why it’s time to take it back.
by Gregory Brew via Foreign Policy on May 16, 2022
BP is trying to divest its share of the Russian state-owned company Rosneft.
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Western Oil Companies Ditching Russia is a New Twist on a Familiar Pattern

For more than a century, Western oil companies have cycled into and out of Russia.
by Michael De Groot via Made By History on March 7, 2022
An oil rig on the ocean.

Spillovers from Oil Firms to U.S. Computing and Semiconductor Manufacturing

Smudging state–industry distinctions and retelling conventional narratives.
by Cyrus C. M. Mody via Reviews In American History on February 22, 2022
Drawing of the oil industry within a crystal ball.

The Mediums Who Helped Kick-Start the Oil Industry

Apparently some people communed with spirits to locate the first underground oil reserves.
by Paul H. Giddens, Jess Romeo, Rochelle Ranieri Zuck via JSTOR Daily on June 18, 2021
A line of prisoners picking cotton in Huntsville, Texas.

The Oil Boom’s Roots in East Texas Cotton Farming

Oil’s rise was as dependent on the old as much as the new. The industry also benefited from changes in agriculture.
by Scot McFarlane via Texas Monthly on November 1, 2017

Oil Barrels Aren't Real Anymore

Once a cask that held crude, the oil barrel is now mostly an economic concept.
by Brian Jacobson via The Atlantic on September 8, 2017

Toxic Legacy: New Boom Highlights Oil’s Hundred-Year Environmental History in West Texas

The ecological history of West Texas challenges the narrative of the region's rugged independence.
by Sarah Stanford-McIntyre via Process: A Blog for American History on May 9, 2017

How World War I Ushered in the Century of Oil

When the war was over, the developed world had little doubt that a nation’s future standing in the world was predicated on access to oil.
by Brian C. Black via The Conversation on April 3, 2017
Men stand around the site of an oil gusher.
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The Oil Battlefields

Syracuse University Geography professor Matt Huber discusses the 1930s oil boom in the American southwest, and the military might brought in to control it.
via BackStory on January 9, 2015
An oil rig sprays crude oil into the air.
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Voices from the Oilfields

Using oral histories of early East Texas oil workers, recorded in the 1950s, we hear about the chaos and excess that accompanied the discovery of oil.
via BackStory on January 9, 2015

When the Wild Imagination of Dr. Seuss Fueled Big Oil

Geisel did not begin his career writing children stories, but selling products.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on August 17, 2012
Title card for animated film "Destination Earth".

Destination Earth (1956)

A Cold War-era cartoon celebrates the wonders of oil and free-market capitalism, and the overthrow of the Stalin-like leader of Mars.
by John Sutherland via The Public Domain Review on June 1, 1956

When Big Oil Was "The Great Vampire Squid" Wrapped Around America

Robert Engler's award-winning 1955 investigation into the oil industry.
by Robert Engler via The New Republic on August 29, 1955
Vladimir Putin's eyes revealed from behind torn paper.

How America Wasted Its Most Powerful Economic Weapon

If world leaders had been clearer about the sanctions Putin would face, they might have deterred his invasion of Ukraine.
by Edward Fishman via The Atlantic on February 24, 2025
The 1917 Silent Parade march in New York City protesting antiblack violence.

The Social-gospel Roots of Environmentalism

America's environmental movement has always been moralistic, which has made it bad at weighing tradeoffs. This accounts for its successes and also its failures.
by William A. Murray via National Affairs on March 21, 2024
Photo of a blue bin filled with recyclable garbage.

Petrochemical Companies Have Known for 40 Years that Plastics Recycling Wouldn't Work

Despite knowing that plastic recycling wouldn't work, new documents show how petrochemical companies promoted it anyway.
by Joseph Winters via Grist on February 20, 2024
Oil pumpjack in the rural southwest.

Public Universities Are Profiting In Billions From Industries On Stolen Indigenous Land

Extractive industries filling public university coffers on stolen land. Here's how 14 land-grant colleges took 8.2 million acres from 123 Indigenous nations.
by Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, Amanda Tachine, An Garagiola, Audrianna Goodwin, Maria Parazo Rose, Clayton Aldern via Grist on February 7, 2024
‘View of Grave Creek Mound’; engraving by Ebenezer Mathers, 1839.

The Plunder and the Pity

Alicia Puglionesi explores the damage white supremacy did to Native Americans and their land.
by Ian Frazier via New York Review of Books on January 18, 2024
Iranian demonstrator dressed as Uncle Sam.
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The Secret C.I.A. Operation That Haunts U.S.-Iran Relations

A 1953 C.I.A.-backed coup that ousted Iran’s Cold War leader has colored U.S.-Iran relations for decades.
via Retro Report on September 28, 2023
Smoke coming from Exxon Mobil plant

Inside Exxon's Strategy To Downplay Climate Change

Internal documents show what the oil giant said publicly was very different from how it approached the issue privately in the Tillerson era.
by Christopher Matthews, Collin Eaton via The Wall Street Journal on September 14, 2023
Graphic showing a gasoline tank (in green) leaking underground.

The Hidden Cost of Gasoline

Gas stations caused a $20 billion toxic mess — and it’s not going away.
by Kate Yoder via Grist on June 14, 2023
President Obama wipes the sweat from his forehead at a press conference.

We Now Know the Full Extent of Obama’s Disastrous Apathy Toward the Climate Crisis

Obama’s official oral history contains new evidence of his indifference and foot-dragging on the most important issue of our time.
by Nathan J. Robinson via Current Affairs on June 5, 2023
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