Wednesday, November 16, 2005

New George Clooney movie, Syriana, propagandizes with misleading oil reserve claims

You may have seen the movie trailer ads for George Clooney's new movie Syriana, a fictional thriller based on corruption and big, bad oil companies. The movie's site also has a link to Oil Change; 'A Campaign to Reduce our Dependence on Oil'.

Listening closely to the trailer, you'll see a scene where Clooney's co-star, Matt Damon says:

"It's [oil] running out. And 90% of what's left is in the Middle East. This is a fight to the death!"

This is hyperbole and 'movie magic' at best. Considering the link on the web site to 'Oil Change', it can also be considered misleading propaganda.

According the Oil & Gas Journal, Vol. 102, No. 47 (Dec. 10, 2004), Middle East reserves make up 64% of the world's oil reserves when you consider the huge oil sands reserves in Canada (see: BizzyBlog's More Real-World Evidence of “Peak Oil” Nonsense):

Total reserves 1,092 billion barrels (Note this does not even include reserves in the North Sea, Mexico, Indonesia, Russia or China). Total reserves for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and UAE amount to 702 billion barrels. 702/1092 = 64%.

It gets worse for the 'world is coming to an end crowd' behind the film. From The Oil Reserve Fallacy:

According to a US Geological Survey report quietly published in 2000, there is more oil outside the Middle East than inside the region. Certainly two thirds is not at all accurate -- It's 54 percent of identified reserves, possibly 40 percent of ultimately recoverable reserves, and possibly 30 percent or less if you include unconventional heavy oil fields.
Facts can be so...so...INCONVENIENT!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very good catch. The propaganda never ends.

BizzyBlog

November 17, 2005 at 11:51 AM  

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