On the eve of The Civil War, Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania.  This discovery forever changed the course of history and, for the first time ever, showed the unbelievable power oil had on the American economy.   

The premiere episode of American Oil covers the first great chapter of U.S. crude.  From its discovery in 1859 to the boom of the black gold rush which followed, and the bust as Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison’s newly discovered electricity was introduced at the 1893 World’s Fair — which plunged oil into its first- ever recession.

A decade after electricity’s debut, JD Rockefeller needed a use for the crude his Texas wells were producing, so he convinced a young Henry Ford to forgo the electric car he was developing, and produce an automobile powered by a combustion engine. However, Rockefeller soon had another battle on his hands as Standard Oil faced monopoly allegations in a series of articles written by a young female reporter, Ida Tarbell. Oil was suddenly seen as a tool of big business, and the farmers of this country fought back — beginning a revolution in the midwest as they developed ethanol engines which ran on corn alcohol. For the first time, America experienced the far reaching effects of oil beyond fuel — but as pure power. Rockefeller pushed back, making alcohol illegal and ethanol engines obsolete by lobbying Washington to pass prohibition.

In the 1930’s, Columbus “Dad” Joiner defied the experts by striking oil in the drought-plagued dirt of East Texas. His discovery ushered in one of the greatest chapters of U.S. history as the oil which gushed from East Texas helped pull America from the Great Depression. However, the world was soon plunged into the second great war and by 1942 Hitler had cut off British petroleum lines. Their oil quickly running dry, the Brits knew there was only one group of men who could save them — Fifty oilmen from Texas and Oklahoma known as the Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest, were sent on a top-secret mission. Under constant threat of enemy fire, these brave oilmen built over 900 wells on a tiny patch of oil-rich land in the British forest, fueling the Allied victory over the Third Reich.

The early ‘70’s saw America battling not only Nixon’s Watergate, but also the OPEC-produced gas crisis. However, Robert Hefner, a wildcatter trying to make a name for himself, believed the deep natural gas boom of ‘79 was the answer to the prayers the U.S. energy business was looking for in order to fight back against OPEC’s stranglehold over the U.S. Hefner’s hunch proved right and a wave of deep drilling swept through Oklahoma, producing a wealth of previously inaccessible gas. All of which was underwritten by the most colorful banker in the history of oil and gas, Bill “Beep” Jennings ,and his Penn Square Bank. Unbelievably, the tiny bank in the middle of an Oklahoma shopping center nearly helped rescue U.S. energy independence … until the wells ran dry.

The early 90’s brought the drying up of traditional reserves. America’s increasing addiction to oil and weak geo political decisions in Washington gave domestic power over to oil rich countries. For the first time in history, not only would America’s present be decided by oil rich foreign governments, but its future as well. However, George Mitchell, a lifelong oil man, believed gas could be extracted from the shale of his suddenly dry Texas fields. Mitchell spent years of trial and error before finally achieving the impossible by discovering the correct formula for successful fracking. His discovery provided the innovation U.S. energy companies needed in order to draw from our vast, untapped oil shale — making the U.S. no longer just the largest consumer of energy in the world, but now the largest producer. Paving the way the future of American energy independence.