The Oil Machine online events

THE OIL MACHINE as part of Worldwide Climate and Justice Education Week

Expired May 1, 2024 4:59 AM
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Please note this stream is for your screening as as part of Worldwide Climate and Justice Education Week only. If you want to use this film for any other purpose, you'll need to contact us here.


The film is offered to you during Earth Month (April 2024) on a pay-what-you-can basis. This is an honesty system. When checking out, we'd ask you to use the sliding scale to set the amount payable to a fee you'd usually pay for showing a film in your educational setting. For those who cannot afford to pay more, the film will be offered for a symbolic £10 (that's approximately $12.75 in U.S. dollars).

Oil has been an invisible machine at the core of our economy and society. It now faces an uncertain future as activists and investors demand change. Is this the end of oil?


By highlighting the complexities of how oil is embedded in our society – from high finance to cheap consumer goods – THE OIL MACHINE brings together a wide range of voices from oil company executives, economists, young activists, workers, scientists, and pension fund managers. It considers how this machine can be tamed, dismantled, or repurposed.

We have five to ten years to control our oil addiction, and yet the licensing of new oil fields continues in direct contradiction with the Paris Climate Agreement. This documentary looks at how the drama of global climate action is playing out in the fight over North Sea oil.


Oil companies are convinced that they can continue to keep drilling while keeping to Net Zero ambitions through adopting new technologies, such as carbon capture. But climate scientists are deeply sceptical of the Net Zero concept and the time it would take for these technologies to be effective.


The film reveals the hidden infrastructure of oil from the offshore rigs and the buried pipelines to its flow through the stock markets of London. As the North Sea industry struggles to meet the need to cut carbon emissions, oil workers see their livelihoods under threat, and investors seek to protect their assets. Meanwhile a younger generation of climate activists are catalysed by the signs of impending chaos, and the very real threat of global sea level rises. THE OIL MACHINE explores the complexities of transitioning away from oil and gas as a society and considers how quickly we can do it.

  • Year
    2022
  • Runtime
    82 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    United Kingdom
  • Premiere
    Sheffield DocFest 2022
  • Rating
    PG
  • Social Media
  • Director
    Emma Davie
  • Producer
    Sonja Henrici
  • Cinematographer
    Julian Schwanitz
  • Editor
    Martin Kayser Landwehr
  • Music
    Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres