25 How OPEC Broke the Seven Sisters

The most powerful cartel in history was born because one executive cut prices without making a single phone call. This is the episode where a Venezuelan exile eating sardine sandwiches in the Library of Congress reverse-engineers the Texas Railroad Commission, a glamorous journalist introduces two revolutionaries over a Coke at the Cairo Hilton, and the CIA dedicates exactly four lines of a 43-page report to the organization that would bring the Western world to its knees. Episode 25 of Crude Ambition traces how OPEC was built - not in a palace, but in a deserted yacht club, by hungry outsiders waiting for giants to make one arrogant mistake.