The Curse of Oil

This three-part series that goes on a revealing journey through the world's oil-producing regions, beyond the familiar territory of the Middle East.

Part 1
Nick Fraser, Storyville Series Editor reveals that the oil price appears to be rising inexorably at the pumps. Newspapers are also full of gloomy articles related to our increasing addiction to oil and energy demand.

Bill Cran's, the other featured series takes a somewhat different approach. We are in fact still amply supplied with oil on planet earth. The problem is that most of it lies in what we cosseted addicts regard as the wrong places. Getting that oil requires dealing with nasty governments or destroying the wilderness. But this is changing very rapidly as it is becoming possible for native populations to obstruct oil companies from oiling on their homegrounds. Cran's series leaves one with the feeling that there are no easy answers - but that, given the hysteria surrounding the subject, is no bad thing.

Part 2
The Caspian Sea contains some of the largest untapped energy reserves on the planet and everybody wants a share. A 1,100-mile pipeline is being built to transport the Caspian's oil to the markets of Europe and North America.

This programme follows the route of the new pipeline through some of the most geographically challenging and politically dangerous places on earth, as it makes its way from the Caspian to the Mediterranean Sea.

En route, the filmmakers encounter disgruntled Turkish villagers, British engineers enduring arctic temperatures and an American-trained force of new military recruits in Georgia.

Part 3
As the demand for oil increases, fragile wilderness areas across the world are being opened up to oil exploration and this has caused furious debate.

This programme travels from the political lobbies of Washington DC to Alaska, where the pristine landscape of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could soon be the site of extensive oil development, and on to Alberta where production of 'The World's Worst Oil' is already underway.

Opposition from environmental groups is growing but so is the world's hunger for oil. We need the oil but how far will we go to get it?

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