Trinidad and Tobago's Pitch Lake, a natural asphalt deposit first recorded by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, opens this account of how a small Caribbean colony became a fixture of the global oil trade. The film traces the shift from harvesting surface pitch for ship caulking to drilling the island's first commercial wells in the early twentieth century, and follows the British and American companies that moved in once the scale of the reserves became clear. Interviews with historians and industry figures cover the labor conditions on the rigs, the racial and colonial hierarchies built into the workforce, and the strikes that punctuated the industry's growth. Archival photographs and footage show the derricks, refineries, and port facilities that grew up around Point Fortin and San Fernando, while the narration ties the island's fortunes to wider currents in twentieth-century oil politics, from wartime fuel demand to the eventual nationalization debates. It is a regional history that treats a small Caribbean nation as a genuine hinge point in the story of global energy.