It powers out jets and coats our lips. We drive on it, ignite it and even play with it. And from the shirts on our backs to the roofs on our heads, we depend on it. So if you think crude is all about the pump, well think again. From wildcatters to visionaries, geopoliticians to geologists and capitalists to union organizers, few real-life dramas feature such colorful characters, fluctuating fortunes, and worldwide high stakes as the story of oil. Petroleum was used by the ancients to waterproof Noah's Ark and fuel the lamps of the Temple of Jupiter. But it was in Pennsylvania in 1853 that the first oil well was dug, and an industry born. With the mass production of the car in the early 20th Century, demand for this black goldexploded. Technology in the service of oil has changed the world as we know it. Improved drill bits allow deeper subterranean deposits to be extracted, off-shore oil rigs and thousand-mile pipelines make deposits in remote areas accessible, and oil tankers the size of three football fields have made it commonplace for a car in New Zealand to run on petroleum taken from Africa's depths. From the days of the dinosaur to a behind-the-scenes tour of a modern rig, this is the saga of the fuel that drives the... Even if we stopped driving our cars tomorrow, America would still need five million barrels of oil a day - more than all of Southern Europe combined. Imagine it: Rubber, Plastic, Nylon, Aerosols, Resins, Solvents, and Lubricants - none can exist without oil, still hailed as Black Gold. From the shirt on your back to the waxy sheen of a beautiful apple, the first secret of Oil is that it's everywhere you look. We'll go behind-the-scenes at a Southern California Oil Refinery where the true value of Oil is first unlocked. Rubber, plastic, nylon, aerosols, resins, solvents, & lubricants; none can exist without oil. If we stopped driving our cars tomorrow, America would still need 5 million barrels of oil a day. From the first well in Pennsylvania to the gushing Spindletop and modern supertankers, the story of oil is the story of civilization as we know it. We'll take a look at the ingenious and outrageous men who risked everything for "black gold" and unimaginable wealth. In the early 1900s a young entrepreneur observed his sister, Maybel., mix coal dust with oil-based Vaseline and apply it to her eyelashes. Soon after he created Maybelline, one of America's leading cosmetics brands. Roughly 9% of every oil barrel's output is jet fuel, and the airline industry burns through 19 billion gallons of it annually. Add just one penny to its cost per gallon and the airline expenses soar more than $180 million. Paraffin wax is a by-product of lubricant oil refining. Not only is it non-toxic, each year it's shaped into more than 3 billion Crayola crayons, 1.5 billion paintballs and one billion pounds of candle wax. America's roads contain more than 19,000 square miles of asphalt, enough to pave over all of New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island.

• published: 25 Apr 2015
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