Having lived in Southern California all my life, I’ve always seen the oil business as a huge part of what makes this country run. I lived near two major oil refineries, and pumps were everywhere. Today, California politics wants to shut it all down, and documentarian Rickey Bird’s film, Kern Oil, shines a spotlight on the last bastion of California oil in Kern County.
Kern Oil opens with a bit of California history. Long before drilling was ever a practice, the indigenous Yokuts people knew about the “black goo” that seeped out of the ground in Kern. Prospectors built wells in the 1860s and then struck pay dirt along the Kern River in the early 1900s. Small farm towns turned into oil towns overnight, with Kern leading the way for the entire state.
In Kern Oil, Rickey Bird, a third-generation oilfield worker, takes his family’s history and brings it into the present. Through a series of interviews, he speaks with everyone from the people running the companies to the guys working the rigs, plus their families and the small business owners who depend on oil to stay open. He also includes immigrants coming to the area and previously incarcerated people who found a new life in oil. Kern County still pumps about 70% of California’s oil and directly employs around 20,000 people. Bird then explains how oil is drilled and the red tape that makes drilling so difficult today.
“…for Kern residents, it’s the final lifeline to their way of life.”
But the industry is in trouble. Sacramento keeps tightening the screws, permits are nearly impossible to get, and the 2022 downturn has workers wondering if they’ll have a job next month. California still uses plenty of oil, though. It just ships more of it in from places like Ecuador, where pipeline explosions have damaged the rainforest. Meanwhile, back in Kern County, families who’ve worked the oilfields for generations are left wondering how much longer their jobs and towns will last.
For those of us who don’t live in Kern County, Kern Oil is a political documentary, but for Kern residents, it’s the final lifeline to their way of life. Filmmaker Bird does his job by showing how important oil is to our everyday lives. Plastics, fuel, and even green technologies like solar rely heavily on oil. That alone should push you to support reasonable policies for safely extracting it.
The film also indicts California politics for basing policy on activism instead of economics and science. Sacramento is destroying the industry with overregulation, so-called climate credits (aka taxes), and a negative PR campaign funded by taxpayers.
Kern Oil also highlights how state politics affects the working middle class. Sacramento seems to forget that eliminating an industry has consequences for the families who have built their lives around it. As the film states, it’s not enough to just say, “You’ll find other work.”
Yes, Kern Oil is a political documentary, and its job is, at best, to convince you of its arguments and, at worst, to get you to consider the other side. While I prefer a more balanced approach to documentaries, as a lifelong Californian, I’ve watched our state—particularly the Central Valley—slowly decline, and Kern Oil makes a strong case for why.
For screening information, visit the Kern Oil official website.
"…it’s not enough to just say, ‘You’ll find other work.’"
