TV REVIEW : ‘The Prize’ a Slick Telling of Oil’s Story

Behind a modern corporate face, the oil industry, the world’s largest business, has always operated in an arena of adventure, global power and human eccentricity. Now, the latest blockbuster series from public television makes the industry accessible to everyone in eight hours of spellbinding TV.

“The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power,” Daniel Yergin’s landmark popular history of the world of petroleum, which won the 1992 Pulitzer prize for general nonfiction, has been adapted as a miniseries that will be shown over four consecutive nights, beginning tonight (9-11 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28, 8-10 p.m. on KPBS-TV Channel 15 and KVCR-TV Channel 24).

Yergin is a talented writer and historian. He is also president of the internationally respected Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm to governments, the oil and gas industry and consumers. So Yergin knows the industry’s saga as well as any oil-patch veteran.

He is also, as he likes to put it, a storyteller. Particularly in the early and middle episodes, he brings a swaggering life to the history of an enterprise that is now widely viewed as one-dimensional, exploitative, a temporarily necessary evil.

In fact, the energy industry has attracted more than its share of Indiana Joneses--from the tough, resourceful geologists exploring for Royal Dutch in the East Indies and for Shell in Imperial Russia, to George Reynolds hunting for oil in Persia until he found it, no matter his company’s orders to give up.

The excitement of the oil hunt, at least for the hunters, hasn’t waned. Less than a year ago, a young Oklahoma oil engineer told me how she had just left the field to climb the corporate pyramid. I asked what in her heart she would rather to be doing. “Exploring,” she replied in a fierce whisper.

Executive producer Jonathan T. Taplin (“The Last Waltz,” “Mean Streets,” “K-2”) read Yergin’s book during a flight to Japan and faxed his proposal for a series as soon as he got off the plane. “I had just seen ‘The Civil War’ and I was really attracted to these larger-than-life characters,” Taplin said. “I thought it was an incredibly fascinating history and a way of telling the story of the modern age through the prism of oil.”

Taplin also recognized, correctly, that “The Prize” had at least one big advantage over the Ken Burns series. It wouldn’t have to rely on still photographs. Oil’s history has mostly taken place after the advent of moving pictures. And the series makes full use of much previously unseen footage, including private scenes of John D. Rockefeller puttering around his yard.

Yergin also knows a good quote. The eccentric Middle East oilman Calouste Gulbenkian remarks in one segment: “Oil men are like cats. One never knows when listening to them whether they are fighting or making love.” At another point, the narrator, in this case actor Donald Sutherland, describes the disguised oil derricks off the Southern California coast as “the industrial version of cosmetic dentistry.”

Deeper down, the series is a coherent, even gripping tale of business. The powerful mechanisms of industry aren’t merely mentioned in passing, as in many documentaries from writers more concerned with political history. Business strategies, and their triumphs and failures for dreamers good-hearted and bad, are at the core of the story.

Indeed, “The Prize” turns the popular notion of the relationship between business and history on its head, making the case that most of the wars and much of the innovation of the last century and a half have turned on the power of oil. In both world wars, for instance, the Germans invaded Russia in large measure to capture the giant oil fields of Baku, not the Russian people.

Oil’s dark side is displayed from the outset. Rockefeller’s steel-hearted monopoly plan--politely defended by grandson David Rockefeller, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank--is laid out in remarkable detail, complete with glimpses into the lives of the rival entrepreneurs plowed under in the rise of Standard Oil. The environmental liabilities of global dependence on oil are also presented in depth--not least the grotesque oil fields of the former Soviet Union, polluted with the equivalent of 400 Exxon Valdez spills, as well as smog-soaked skies closer to home.

In the final segment, which looks closely at the love-hate bond between Southern California and the oil industry, even the adventurous side of the industry is balanced with modern concerns.

“I understand the romance of looking for this stuff,” says Jeremy Leggett, an engineer and former oil explorer, now with the environmentalist group Greenpeace. “It’s very beguiling . . . but it’s a false illusion.” Citing Russian statistics of shortened life expectancy since oil and gas production came to western Siberia, Leggett bluntly declares: “The oil and gas industry kills.”

Yet the ultimate fairness of “The Prize” is perhaps no better attested to than in an internal employee memo recently posted by San Francisco-based Chevron Corp., one of the world’s largest oil companies.

“We take issue with some of the viewpoints and impressions presented during ‘The Prize,’ particularly during the environment segment,” wrote vice president Rod Hartung. “But in general, this is a balanced and fascinating story not to be missed.”

Michael Parrish covers the energy and environmental industries for The Times.