A tank of gas, a world of trouble

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Published Jul 29 2006 by Chicago Tribune, Archived Jul 29 2006

A tank of gas, a world of trouble

by Paul Salopek

What does it take to quench America’s mighty thirst for gasoline? Pulitzer-winning correspondent Paul Salopek traced gas pumped at a suburban Chicago station to the fuel’s sources around the globe. In doing so, he reveals how our oil addiction binds us to some of the most hostile corners of the planet—and to a petroleum economy edging toward crisis.

Story: Paul Salopek, Tribune correspondent
Research: Brenda Kilianski, Tribune researcher
Photos: Kuni Takahashi, Tribune photographer

Video

Travelogue of Addiction - Online video (Flash)
EB editor: Well-produced thoughtful documentary covering multiple aspects of the oil crisis. Kunstler and Simmons are among the many experts interviewed. The segment on "Oil and Urban Sprawl" goes beyond what typically has been covered in the mainstream media.

Oil Safari (TV program)
What's the future of global oil production? And just where does our oil come from? In "Oil Safari", the Chicago Tribune presents a novel travelogue, showing the world in what could be the waning days of cheap oil in America and across the globe.
Thursday, August 03, 2006 7:00 PM on WYCC (Chicago)
Not sure if this is the same program as is available online (see above).

Online Articles

About the project :
Paul Salopek and photographer Kuni Takahashi traveled to the distant sources of the South Elgin Marathon's gas.

Chapter 1: The pay zone
A Marathon station in South Elgin, Ill., serves as an ideal prism to examine the coming end of the oil age.

Chapter 2: The frontier
Americans have hitched their 210 million autos to Africa, forcing the planet’s last superpower to rattle its half-empty oilcan at the world's poorest continent.

Chapter 3: The war
The hidden costs of our oil addiction include everything from U.S. job losses to the medical bills of American troops wounded in Iraq.

Chapter 4: Last call
An energy cold war over oil threatens to become the defining struggle of the 21st Century. An early flash point: the United States and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

Background

Sidebar: Peak oil theory takes center stage :
...with crude prices hitting record highs since 2004, global oil demand outstripping supplies like never before and major discoveries stagnant for 20 years, peak oil has migrated from the fringe to the center of the global energy debate.

Sidebar: Is the Saudi bonanza peaking?:
Saudi Arabia's epic oil reserves are a global insurance policy: a supply of crude so plentiful it can always be counted on, in a pinch, to ease almost any conceivable energy crisis. Or so experts used to think. But today, some energy analysts are warning that the oil kingdom's fabled bounty may no longer be reliable--a stunning development that, if true, would have sobering implications for the world economy.

Sidebar: The nature of oil:
Petroleum is civilization's lifeblood. So goes the cliche. But although it is one of the most studied substances on Earth, it remains essentially mysterious, elusive.

Editorial Notes

Suggested by WT and "Pl". Pl writes:

A fantastic on-line, multi-media Special Report on oil by the Chicago Tribune, including an interview with Matthew Simmons, a discussion of peak oil and the potential peak in Saudi Arabian oil production.

I'd especially recommend the sidebars and the online video.

UPDATE: If you like the documentary based on this series, you might suggest to your local public television station that they run it. (It's now scheduled to run on WYCC of Chicago Thursday August 3 at 7pm.)

Biography of reporter Salopek from the Chicago Tribune:

Paul F. Salopek is a Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent who has covered Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia.

Salopek has won two Pulitzer Prizes. In 1998, Salopek won for Explanatory Reporting for his coverage of the controversial Human Genome Diversity Project. His 2001 Pulitzer for International Reporting recognized his work in Africa, including his coverage of the civil war in Congo.

Prior to joining the Tribune, he worked as a writer for National Geographic for three years. Before that, he reported on U.S.-Mexico border issues for the El Paso (Texas) Times. In 1990, he was Gannett News Service bureau chief in Mexico City.

Salopek began his journalism career in 1985 when his motorcycle broke down in Roswell, N.M., and he took a police-reporting job at the local newspaper to earn repair money. Outside of journalism, Salopek has worked off and on as a commercial fisherman.

Salopek received a degree in environmental biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1984.

For personal background, see this interview with Salopek.

UPDATE (July 30). At peakoil-dot-com, firestarter reports:

Just opened my hard copy of the Trib this morning and found the special insert at the number two slot, behind front page, section A. The special insert is HUGE! In my thirty odd years of reading local newspapers I cannot remember a devotion to one subject this extensively. The graphics are quite impressive also.

-BA

Original article available here