This short cartoon film illustrates the creation of an oilfield in Southwest Persia (modern day Iran). This film is a Halas and Batchelor Cartoon. Halas and Batchelor was a British animation company that was founded by husband and wife John Halas and Joy Batchelor in 1940 and produced mostly education and propaganda films. The story and direction was done by Allan Crick, and the animation direction was done by Bob Privett. Official synopsis: Everyone knows that petroleum comes out of the earth, but the question is how did it get there, and what is it made of? The answer to these questions are given simply and accurately in this animated programme. The programme shows how the creatures which inhabited the world about a hundred million years ago lived and died, and how their bones, and those of countless minute sea organisms, collected on the sea bottom where they were covered with mud. The mud, brought down from rivers, became deeper and slowly hardened into rock. The decayed organisms entombed in the rock were in time chemically altered into minute blobs of oil and gas. We see how the oil so formed was contained by a cap of impervious rock, and how great movements of the earth’s crust folded this rock into domes beneath which the oil tends to accumulate. Note: This film shared First Prize at the Venice Film Festival, 1950.

Globe spins (0:30). Cartoon house (0:46). Gasoline tanks fill the cartoon car up with gas (0:52). Gas station pumps fill up the tanks of cartoon cars (1:01). Factory pumping out smoke, while cars move in front of it (1:14). Earth spinning (1:23). Cartoon forest (1:35). Cartoon dinosaurs hunt and chase each other (1:41). Decapitated dinosaur head sinks to the bottom of the ocean (2:45). Sea bed (3:00). Particles suspended in the ocean water (3:05). Up close shot of a particle (3:18). Pointy hill/mountain peaks (3:38). Rocks break off from the dried mountain peak (3:50). Cartoon rain (4:03). River carries debris out to the sea (4:10). The debris spreads out far and wide (4:17). Layers of the muddy debris pile up over time (4:38). Particles in the pilled matter (4:51). Oil and gas from the decaying particles float upwards (5:20). Block of slowly hardened mud (5:55). Porous rock on top of the mud block (6:12). Waterproof layers seal it off (6:18). The oil and gas cannot escape due to the non porous top layers (6:21). Sea water and sea floor (6:37). Debris and dirt piles up over time (6:46). A porous rock covers the piled up dirt (7:03). Shells and animal fossils from limestone (7:18). Oil is soaked up into cracks (7:26). Sea water recedes from areas (7:31). Non-Porous material covers the rocks with cracks so the oil and gas can’t seep out (7:52). The sea returns (8:10). Cartoon plate tectonics (8:23). Landscapes change over time, valleys become canyons (8:52). Cartoon brittle limestone collects oil (9:14). Cover rock gets worn away and the gas and oil escape (9:22). Large mountains and rivers in Iran (9:42). Cartoon drawing of rocks and a collection of oil (10:01). Well is drilled into the cartoon rock layers to demonstrate how oil is extracted (10:20). Factories pumping out smoke and cars passing by in front of them (10:46).

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com