Charles Gibson anchors a well-oiled ABC News special

Posted By JAY BOBBIN, © ZAP2IT

Posted 6 months ago

Oil is as rich a subject as ever, if not more, with many meanings for many people.

"ABC World News" anchor Charles Gibson pumps out various aspects in "Over a Barrel: The Truth About Oil," a new ABC documentary airing Wednesday, July 22. In considering everyone from speculators who price oil to consumers who need it to run cars and heat homes, Gibson covers a lot of territory -- also with his own mileage during the hour, which takes him from New York's Wall Street to the Gulf of Mexico.

The topic hardly is new for the Emmy-winning journalist commonly called "Charlie," who reports on some element of it virtually every weeknight. Still, he admits he has learned much while researching and taping the special.

"You report the price of oil each night, but I didn't know how that was derived," he says. "We're in an unsustainable situation at the moment, in terms of the amount of oil we consume ... . The world's demand for oil is getting so much greater, it's going to get more expensive for the United States all the time just with supply and demand.

"We have to get to alternative fuels," Gibson says. "There's an interesting question of whether Americans will go to smaller cars, as the Obama administration seems to want, but I suspect Americans want larger cars. It's what we're used to, our highways are designed for them, and there's the so-called 'soccer mom' movement that minivans and SUVs are made for."

Gibson sees the choice as a reduced dependence on petroleum or a concentrated move to other energy sources.

"It could be liquid natural gas, it could be hydrogen, it could be batteries, it could be ethanol," he says. "The critical thing is getting to a differing powering mechanism."

Such options may be more possible thanks to ever-advancing technology, Gibson notes, but so might an increased oil supply.

"There is no question of the ability to get oil from previously unreachable sources and places," he says. "We were on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico where they are getting oil from where you couldn't have 10 years ago. The well heads are 7,000 feet down, then they've had to drill down another 25,000 feet in order to reach the oil. They're bringing it up as high as an airliner flies.

"The hydrostatic pressure that used to exist on the lines wouldn't have permitted you to do that. There's just so much weight of water, you couldn't have done it, but they can now drill that deeply. That's a lot of oil they're producing, though it's never necessarily going to produce enough to supply the United States' needs."

U. S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Gen. Wesley Clark are among those who discuss energy alternatives with Gibson in "Over a Barrel," executive produced by television news veteran Tom Yellin, who helped initiate ABC's "Nightline." As much as the documentary references the future, it also stays mindful of the here and now, especially in dollars and cents.

"If you can power a car with a battery for $3.60 a gallon, I'm going to set the price of oil so that gas is $3.50 a gallon," Gibson reasons. "It's just to keep us addicted, and that's not dumb. It's a piece of economic intelligence.

"They want to sell their product, and they want to get profits from it -- but as Energy Secretary Chu tells us, it's politically not palatable to set the taxes on gasoline so high that it encourages the development of other means of locomotion. You can't get gas up to European prices. The American public would go nuts."

With requests for guests, the "Over a Barrel" team generally found cooperation.

"There are other people I would have liked to interview," Gibson says, "but that was more a matter of time than anything else. The only person I know of who turned us down was Gov. (Sarah) Palin; she said she's not doing any national interviews, for reasons that I guess are her own."

Following his sharing of anchor duties with Diane Sawyer on last month's ABC "Primetime" health care special "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," Gibson appreciates having an hour to focus on the oil issue.

"In considering what would be good timing for this program, summer is best," he says, "because there's a natural run-up of oil and gas prices. We're not yet in 2009 where we were in 2008.

"There's a general feeling that, to the extent that speculators and producers control the price of oil, they went too far last year ... and there was a public backlash. I don't know of another product where supply and demand are in such close balance. When it gets slightly out of balance in one direction or the other, the ramifications are far greater than you might expect. We're trying to make that understandable in a one-hour show."

Gibson slipped in a June vacation before completing "Over a Barrel." He was glad for one, after a highly active news cycle stoked by such stories as the economic crisis and the 2008 presidential race.

"We'll never have an election like that again, I guess," Gibson reflects. "It was historic, and a break with the past, in so many ways. And the economic story is quite something; it all has really gone by in a blur. It's just happened so fast, but it's been fascinating to be a part of. I've been very lucky."