Fill' Er Up (1959)

Sponsors: E.I. du Pont de Nemours
Production: John Sutherland Productions
Voices: Marvin Miller, Bud Hiestand, Herb Vigran
Animation: Gerard Baldwin, Emery Hawkins, Ed de Mattia
Music: Dean Elliot
Director: Carl Urbano
Productor: John Sutherland
Originally Released on December 00, 1959.
Originally Released Theatrically.
Running Time: 12 minutes.

Fill' Er Up is basically a short film created to talk about oil, petroleum products and finally, gasoline and fuels.

It deals with the benefits promoted by the oil industry, presenting a humorous summary of it, from the processes of exploration and delimitation of oil fields, through the processes of drilling, extraction and oil production (in short, dealing with the Upstream aspect) and then entering the refining processes, industrial production of derivatives and product distribution (concluding in the Downstream aspect).

It covers the beginnings of our civilization's history to the most recent days, to introduce the history of oil from the beginning of exploration to the present day. The film explains how research began on oil refining, which initially were only interested in kerosene for lighting purposes at night, (gasoline and other possible by-products were discarded - the era of the explosion engine had not yet arrived, and the industrial revolution had barely taken its first steps, with the advent of steam engines...).

Then, the advent of the combustion engine and the beginning of the use of gasoline as a fuel with high energy potential for the benefit of humanity is presented. How this helped to produce the technological development of nations, especially the United States, including the improvement of the refining process itself, with the improvement of product quality and with the increase in productivity and the quantity of refined gasoline, through the process of cracking.

This, allied to the competitiveness between oil companies and the freedom of the market, leveraged an economic growth in this industry, which is increasingly powerful and allowing more development and research in the area, leading to the production of vehicles with increasingly more efficient, less noisy and pollutants and increasingly powerful.

Next, they briefly address the development of new processes applied to refining (polymerization, alkylation, catalytic reforming), which allowed for an even greater improvement in gasoline production, making the product even better for the consumer.

Then, the short talks about the quantities produced on average to supply the North American consumer market, the logistical complexities of meeting internal and external demands and resisting foreign competitiveness. This includes the race for oil exploration for new deposits worldwide.

It also addresses the estimated exploration cost per well and how much this cost is impacted in relation to the depletion of reserves already in production. In this line of analysis, a parallel is drawn between oil exploration and supply to the refining industry, in order to keep the costs of finished products low, especially gasoline.

The short film ends, presenting an overview of the entire oil industry up to the present time (those at the time of the film's production, it should be noted!). In very good-natured language, he tells the average American citizen the perks he gets every time he orders "fill' er up"!