Oil! oil museums in Kern County, California and the libraries and museums in the area around Silver City, New Mexico, as well as the period photography, which played a large part in shaping his screenplay and the film. Oil! Oil! is a novel by Upton Sinclair, first published in 1926–27 and told as a third-person narrative, with only the opening pages written in the first person. The book was written in the context of the Harding administration's Teapot Dome Scandal and takes place in Southern California. It is a social and political satire skewering the human foibles of all its characters.
History of oil in California through 1930 in the American economy and political arena. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge created the Federal Oil Conservation Board in an effort to control oil production and stabilize the oil market. However, The American Petroleum Institute (API), representing over 500 oil companies, opposed the program because it feared many of its affiliated oil corporations would go out of business. Ultimately, through API’s resistance, Coolidge’s program never gained sufficient power. In 1929, however, the sense of crisis in the oil market grew as vast amounts of oil supplies were going unused in Southern California and throughout the US. The API reversed its