Marking 50 years since the 1973 global oil crisis

Marking 50 years since the 1973 global oil crisis

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

To mark 50 years since the global oil crisis, we’re focusing on oil - from discovery to disaster. We hear from Dr Fadhil Chalabi, then the deputy secretary general of Opec (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) about what happened during the 1973 crisis.

Our guest Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, explains why oil became the lifeblood of industrial economies during the last two centuries. We also learn how Kazakhstan signed ‘the deal of the century’ to become a fossil fuel powerhouse thanks to the Tengiz Oil Field.

Plus, why in 1956, not everyone welcomed the discovery of oil in the Nigerian village of Oloibiri. We find out more about the devastating impact of one of the world’s largest oil spills - when the Amoco Cadiz tanker ran aground off the coast of France in 1978. The wreck released more than 220,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea.

And finally, how an indigenous community in the Ecuadorian Amazon fought a court battle to protect their land from oil drilling – and won.

Contributors: Dr Fadhil Chalabi – former deputy secretary general of Opec Professor Helen Thompson - Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University Bruce Pannier - Central Asia news correspondent Chief Sunday Inengite – chief of Oloibiri, Nigeria Marguerite Lamour – former secretary to Alphonse Arzel, the mayor of Ploudalmézeau in France Jose Gualing - former Sarayaku president Ena Santi - Sarayaku community leader

(Photo: Oil rig. Credit: Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images)

Episoder(467)

The Collapse of Northern Rock

The Collapse of Northern Rock

The run on a British bank which signalled the coming global financial crisis, a schoolboy arrested in East Germany for writing a letter, a doctor remembers the Sabra Shatila massacre in Beirut, and a Nigerian archaeological treasure trove.Photo: Northern Rock customers queuing outside the Kingston branch, in order to take their money out on September 17th 2007. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

16 Sep 201750min

The Fairy Photos

The Fairy Photos

The search for a spirit world after WW1 that led people to believe that photographs of fairies were real. Plus Jamaica's worst train crash, France's last execution by guillotine, the man who saved the Proms and life in a giant greenhouse in Arizona - Biosphere 2.Photo: Frances Griffiths and the "Cottingley Fairies" in a photograph made in 1917 by her cousin Elsie Wright with paper cut-outs and hatpins. Credit: Alamy

9 Sep 201750min

The Death of Princess Diana

The Death of Princess Diana

Princess Diana's brother remembers the passionate speech he gave at her funeral, and one of the doctors who treated her at the scene of her fatal car crash remembers her death.Plus, how George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, the development of a revolutionary new 3D medical scanning technique, and the birth of the online auction site eBay.Picture: Earl Spencer and Prince William at Princess Diana's funeral. Credit: Getty/AFP

2 Sep 201749min

Medicine in World War One

Medicine in World War One

In BBC archive recordings, veterans tell the story of how medical care dealt with the horrors of WW1. Plus when Germany put Nazis on trial, race riots in London's Notting Hill in 1958, and in East Germany in 1992. And the inventors of Botox.Photo: Australian wounded on the Menin Road on the Western Front, 1917 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

26 Aug 201749min

Nike and the Sweatshop Problem

Nike and the Sweatshop Problem

On this week's programme, how campaigners took on Nike in the 1990s, plus the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the newspaper which defied Argentine's military dictatorship. We also find out more about nudism in East Germany and the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.PHOTO: Nike worker Cicih Sukaesih telling her story in America in 1996 (courtesy of Jeff Ballinger)

19 Aug 201750min

Reagan's Bombing Joke

Reagan's Bombing Joke

Ronald Reagan's joke about bombing Russia in the 1980s, the murder of a Palestinian cartoonist in London, communal violence in India a year before partition, the man who discovered the Great Pacific Garbage patch, and Florence Nightingale, in her own words and those of people who knew her.Photo: American president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s at his desk in the White House, Washington DC. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

11 Aug 201752min

When Homosexuality Was a Crime

When Homosexuality Was a Crime

Comedian and broadcaster Pete Price speaks about being subjected to horrific aversion therapy to "cure" him of his homosexuality in 1960s Britain. Plus the 99-year-old former aide to the Chinese nationalist leader, Chiang Kai Shek, a radical new approach to housing in the former USSR, the perils of deep sea commercial diving in the North Sea and how the Welsh fought for recognition of their language. Photo: Pete Price (private collection)

29 Jul 201750min

Psychological Warfare

Psychological Warfare

Spooking fighters during the Vietnam War, building the Mont Blanc Tunnel, designing a Nintendo legend, the murder of Gianni Versace and archive voices from the 'Bonus Army' a protest movement of WW1 veterans which shook the US government in 1932.Photo:Viet Cong guerrillas on patrol during the Vietnam War, 2nd March 1966: (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

22 Jul 201750min

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