It is the fundamental issue of our time: Energy; where we get it; how we use it; what happens then. It powers our homes and our economy; it creates troubled alliances and disturbing divisions; it empowers and impoverishes; it enables almost all that we do and now threatens all that we have become.
The Peabody-award winning SoundVision Productions presents BURN: An Energy Journal, a broadcast and digital project hosted by one of public radio’s most trusted journalists and master storytellers, Alex Chadwick.
In this episode, Hunting for Oil: Risks and Rewards:
BURN tackles one of the most important energy questions facing America: Are we running out of oil? It’s not an easy question to answer and, in an effort to understand what’s at stake, Alex travels to some of the country’s most important petroleum exploration sites. What is oil? How can you find it? How is it extracted, refined, transported and utilized? Could we get along without it? What goes into pricing a gallon of gas at the pump?
Also, during this hour long broadcast, we mark the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Alex visits the Gulf coast, where hundreds of offshore rigs cut into the ocean’s bottom in an unabated effort to satisfy the country’s petroleum needs. But as drilling continues, so does debate over the impact of Deepwater Horizon. Where did all that oil go? Is the seafood safe to eat? Two years on, how are the people and ecosystems of the Gulf holding up?
