Oil built and broke empires across the twentieth century, and this eight-part series traces that history from the first Baku gushers and Rockefeller's Standard Oil monopoly through the Middle East concessions, the two World Wars, and the 1970s energy crises. Based on Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the series moves through archival footage, newsreels, and interviews with historians, oilmen, and policymakers to show how petroleum shaped diplomacy and war rather than just markets. Winston Churchill's decision to convert the British navy from coal to oil, the carve-up of Middle Eastern reserves between Western companies, the rise of OPEC, and the standoffs between American executives and Gulf state rulers all get sustained treatment. The series treats oil as a lens on twentieth-century power itself, following the same barrels through boardrooms, battlefields, and gas station lines. Its scope runs from wildcatters in Pennsylvania and Texas to the Gulf War, showing a single resource pulling the entire century's politics along behind it.