SCRUDE

Oil, eh? One of the most troublesome substances known to man.

Burn it and the world goes into meltdown. Disrupt it and the world goes into meltdown. You just can't win with oil... unless, of course, you're in the business.

Supply disruptions hand the oil majors a golden chance to cash in on the subsequent spiralling price of their product... as the world was to discover to its cost the day Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Or rather, was to re-discover. For this wasn't the first time prices soared on the back of a war-caused oil supply crisis. It was a virtual mirror image of the first great oil shock fifty years earlier.

In 1973 the upshot was the same as half a century later - a global, rocketing oil price-caused economic tailspin and the birth of a new Foreign Legion as the oil industry scrambled to find new reserves to bring online.

From all walks of life, all corners of the world they came. A legion of men answering the call to join the great '73 oil rush, all with but one burning ambition - to escape the worldwide economic slump, swap the dole queue for the oil crew and take the A-train to wherever this new Klondike led.

This is the slightly disconcerting account of one of them.