The Search for the “Golden Shrimp”: The Myth of Interdependence in Oil Drilling Films

According to John Ezell’s Innovations in Energy: The Story of Kerr-McGee, after the first successful oil well was drilled out of sight of land in the Gulf of Mexico in 1947 by the Kerr-McGee Company, the January 1948 issue of Oil declared, “The Kerr-McGee well definitely extends the kingdom of oil into a new province that is of incalculable extent and may help assuage the all-devouring demand for gasoline and fuel oils” (quoted in Ezell 169). A reporter from the Kermac News illustrated this valorization of the success of the oil well: “Everybody shook hands with everybody twice” (quoted in Ezell 164-5). 

Completion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2009 resulted in similar kudos. As the deepest oil and gas well ever drilled offshore, the Deepwater Horizon was lauded by Robert L. Long, Transocean Ltd.'s Chief Executive Officer. On Vermont Public Radio, Debbie Elliot asserted the same positive response to oil drilling in the Gulf. But according to Elliot, fishermen and oil companies built an interdependent relationship: “The local fishermen feared their way of life was in jeopardy when the first oilmen arrived in Cajun south Louisiana. But over the last half century, the two industries learned to live together. Oil and gas brought jobs and opportunity for many families.” 

It is this interdependent relationship between the fishing and oil industries that has taken center stage in media discussions after the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater oil rig explosion and spill in April 2010, in spite of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that seemed to demonstrate oil and wild nature don’t mix. From a contemporary perspective, the conflict between these two industries seems new, a product of the rig explosion and its aftermath. In fact, the conflict began with the first oil well in and around the Gulf in the 1910s, culminating with the Kerr-McGee’s successful well in 1947. Any conflict between the two industries, however, has been whitewashed by media representations of their relationship, building toward Elliot’s conclusion that they learned to live together because oil brought money and jobs. Oil films reflect this myth.

O Illinois!

 

O Illinois 

I’m sending you a Hollywood postcard 

a Collateral lush island 

visor 

a Dark City Shell Beach 

nightmare 

a six-year-old’s walk 

on packed sand 

bending for green sea glass 

stretching toward gorged pelicans 

climbing palmetto lined sea walls 

when the sun blisters. 

In a neighbor’s yard 

 dogs race around a collapsed pool. 

 A boxer jumps a fence 

 landing in soft snow.

Quantum of Solace and Water Wars

 

 

After Bond and Camille escape by plane and parachute into Greene’s Bolivian eco-park, they find evidence for the real reason for Greene’s establishing nature preserves: “They used dynamite,” Bond exclaims. “This used to be a riverbed. Greene isn’t after the oil. He wants the water…. It’s one dam. He’s creating drought. He’ll have built others.” With control of water, Greene and Quantum, the clandestine company he fronts can charge exorbitant prices for the resource. 

When Bond and Camille walk through a nearby village, they see firsthand the results of this manufactured drought—an empty water tank and a line of peasants coaxing drops from a dry faucet. The film’s action-filled plot resolves in conventional ways. Camille kills Medrano to avenge her family, and Bond saves her from a series of fantastic explosions and fires. Greene tries to escape, but Bond leaves him in the desert with nothing but a quart of motor oil to drink. His organization ends up killing him. 

The eco-plot, however, is resolved in ways that again highlight the film’s connection with the Bolivian Water Wars: “Well, the dam we saw will have to come down,” Bond declares. “And there’ll be others too.” Ultimately, however, Quantum of Solace most effectively illustrates the repercussions of the appropriative doctrine and its solution: a water democracy like that established in Bolivia after the recent water wars there.

Quantum of Solace and Water Rights, continued

 

For Clover, Quantum of Solace “comes closer to telling the Bolivian story than the critics were able to address, or notice” (8). With the devastating repercussions of privatization, the citizens of Cochabamba revolted, so that “midway through 2000, the “Bolivian Water Wars” ended with the eviction of the consortium and, shortly, the fall of the government itself” (8), paving the way for the election of Evo Moralis and his Movement for Socialism. Vandana Shiva sees the outcome of this water war as a great victory for “the people’s democratic will” and proof that “privatization is not inevitable, and that corporate takeover of vital resources can be prevented” (103). 

In Quantum, on the other hand, Bond (Daniel Craig) stands in for this communal effort to retake the water supply, winning a battle against an organization that “is everywhere” but remains nameless until Bond connects the corporation with rich “environmentalist” Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric). Greene’s “organization” can give Bolivian General Medrano (Joaquin Cosia) back his government as long as Medrano ensures they will gain access to what looks like a worthless desert in Bolivia. Medrano declares, “You won’t find oil there. Everyone has tried,” but Greene explains, “but we own everything we find.” 

Greene’s purpose for this newly acquired Bolivian desert becomes clearer once M (Judi Dench) outlines Greene’s file for Bond, explaining that he serves as CEO of Greene Planet, a utility company and also does “a lot of philanthropic work, buying up large tracts of land for ecological preserves.” But “there’s a firewall around his other corporate holdings” and the Americans claim they have no interest in his work. 

Greene’s interest in water as commodity instead of resource comes through when he admits water “is the world’s most precious resource, [so] we need to control as much of it as we can. Bolivia must be top priority.” Greene even blames the Bolivian government for water problems at a fundraising party, asserting, “they cut down the trees, they act surprised when the water and the soil wash out to sea,”