Oxford Film Festival 2009

In 2006, the United States Geological Survey estimated there to be more than 200 billion barrels of crude oil resting in a previously unreachable formation beneath western North Dakota. With oil climbing to record prices and new drilling technologies becoming available, the area has become a free-for-all, as oil companies descend on small rural towns, like Stanley, N.D. (population 1,300), to negotiate land rights and mineral deeds with farmers and then start drilling into the shale miles below. Features stunning cinematography of the northern plains and revealing interviews with farmers receiving checks for wells on their property and oil workers filling the motels, bars, and jails as small town America faces the unyielding global thirst for oil and all the accompanying change.