Planet Oil

SYNOPSIS

Iain Stewart examines how the fuel has come to dominate the modern world, visiting the places that gave birth to the earth's oil riches, exploring the stories of the people who fought over its control and supply and looking at how mankind's insatiable thirst for oil is changing the planet. In the first episode he looks at how 19th-century amateur geologist George Bissell went searching for oily puddles in Pennsylvania that he had a hunch could be the source of a new kind of fuel, and follows the story on through the development of products that could light homes, and in turn provide power for the newly emerging mass car market.