The Eskimo and The Oil Man

As the Arctic melts oil companies are moving north. The polar regions will be the next Saudi Arabia, the next Panama Canal. At stake for the US is trillions of dollars, national security and the gain or loss of geopolitical power, all played out in America's rapidly changing high north. The Eskimo and the Oil Man tells the story through the eyes of two men representing very different cultures and who both have big stakes in the outcome. Inupiat Eskimo Edward Itta is Mayor of the North Slope of Alaska, a Wyoming size region containing all of US Arctic oil. In the frigid waters north of Itta's home city of Barrow there is believed to lie up to three times as much oil as in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell has dispatched one of its rising stars to get that oil.

During his career as an oil man, Pete Slaiby has soothed the fears of local leaders in the Mideast, Africa and South America. But Alaska has turned into his toughest job. Now Shell has sunk over 3 billion into the region but has been blocked by Itta, the courts and federal agencies. As both men maneuver to shape the fate of US energy policy in the 21st century, their personal drama - filled with surprises - plays out against polar sea lanes opening, an international race between nations to claim ocean bottom, new aggressive Russian moves off America, and the question of whether the Arctic's famed wildlife, and base of Inupiat culture and diet, will survive.

The outcome of this story will effect every American. If you want to understand the true cost of reducing gasoline prices to $2 a gallon, follow Bob Reiss as he spends time in remote Eskimo villages, sails on the only working US Icebreaker, and interviews military experts, scientists, diplomats, Eskimo whale hunters and politicians at the highest levels of Washington. The story of the Eskimo and the Oil Man is the story of every American community trying to balance the need for energy with the love of the wild.