Crude Ambition is an audio deep dive into the raw power of energy. They call it the industry of industries where most people see a gas station while we see the most high stakes and ruthless game of chess ever played. This is the story of the genius and the greed and the unapologetic reality of the hydrocarbon age as we deconstruct the monopolies that built empires along with the geopolitics that start wars and the industrial titans who realized early on that if you own the energy you own the future. We do not deal in sanitized narratives or green fairy tales but instead focus on energy realism
The Cold War is over, oil is cheap, and everyone thinks energy crises are history. Then at 2 a.m. on August 2nd, 1990, a hundred thousand Iraqi troops roll into Kuwait and shatter the illusion. This is the episode where Saddam Hussein gambles on annexation, the world's dependence on the Persian Gulf snaps back into focus, and the first post-Cold War crisis turns out to be all about oil. Episode 37 of Crude Ambition covers the invasion that proved the prize was never safe.
6 Apr 2026
36 The 1986 Oil Price Bloodbath
Saudi Arabia has had enough. This is the episode where the kingdom's oil revenues collapse from $119 billion to $26 billion, quota cheating tears OPEC apart, and the Saudis finally stop propping up the price and threaten to flood the market. Episode 36 of Crude Ambition follows the brutal price war of the mid-1980s and the question haunting every oil capital on earth: how low can it go?
6 Apr 2026
35 How Wall Street broke the oil giants
The greatest oil boom in history ends with a billion-dollar shale project killed overnight and Colorado ghost towns sprouting weeds. This is the episode where the fever of thirty-four-dollar oil gives way to glut, conservation proves more powerful than anyone imagined, and OPEC watches helplessly as the world learns to use less. Episode 35 of Crude Ambition charts how the bust that followed the boom nearly turned oil into just another commodity.
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