CNN Pressroom - Special Investigations Unit, Frank Sesno Considers Scenarios for Documentary Set to Air on Saturday, June 2

As Americans face the highest gasoline prices in the nation’s history, CNN special correspondent Frank Sesno investigates the obstacles to finding solutions for the world’s addiction to oil. At the dawn of another busy summer travel season, this hour-long documentary examines a hypothetical, yet plausible situation: A series of natural and man-made disasters interrupting the already strained oil supply chain.

CNN: Special Investigations Unit – We Were Warned, Out of Gas, will air on Saturday, June 2, at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. All times Eastern.

Sesno examines how major stresses on the international fuel supply chain could cripple domestic and international commerce, tourism and the multinational food supply web and how over-reliance on fossil fuels causes global climate change. Sesno speaks to global entrepreneur and innovator Sir Richard Branson, who intends to do something about both challenges, particularly when his Virgin Airlines fleet burns 700 million gallons of fuel annually, an increase in costs of about $1 billion dollars over the past three years.

“If fuel prices went to a $120.00 a barrel, which is not beyond the realms of possibilities, the short-term effect would be massive bankruptcies in quite a lot of industries,” Branson says in the documentary.

To meet the global challenge of energy security, Branson founded a renewable energy research corporation, Virgin Fuels, that is providing industry leadership in an apparent vacuum of government leadership. An exception may be Brazil, which produces fuels from sugar cane.

With rare interviews with famed automobile industry innovator Bob Lutz and former CIA Director James Woolsey, Sesno also explores the oil sands of Western Canada, the efficiency of hybrid automobiles and the American politics and international trade policies that maintain dependence on such a fragile balance.

CNN: Special Investigations Unit – We Were Warned, Out of Gas was executive produced by Steve Robinson; Heather O’Neill was producer. The vice president and senior executive producer of CNN Productions is Mark Nelson.

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