What does it take to quench America’s mighty thirst for gasoline? Pulitzer-winning correspondent Paul Salopek traced gas pumped at a suburban Chicago station to the fuel’s sources around the globe. In doing so, he reveals how our oil addiction binds us to some of the most hostile corners of the planet—and to a petroleum economy edging toward crisis.

STORY BY PAUL SALOPEK, TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT
RESEARCH BY BRENDA KILIANSKI, TRIBUNE RESEARCHER
PHOTOS BY KUNI TAKAHASHI, TRIBUNE PHOTOGRAPHER

About the project Paul Salopek (left) and photographer Kuni Takahashi traveled to the distant sources of the South Elgin Marathon's gas. Read the story

Chapter 1: The pay zone A Marathon station in South Elgin, Ill., serves as an ideal prism to examine the coming end of the oil age. Read the story

Chapter 2: The frontier Americans have hitched their 210 million autos to Africa, forcing the planet’s last superpower to rattle its half-empty oilcan at the world's poorest continent. Read the story

Chapter 3: The war The hidden costs of our oil addiction include everything from U.S. job losses to the medical bills of American troops wounded in Iraq. Read the story

Chapter 4: Last call An energy cold war over oil threatens to become the defining struggle of the 21st Century. An early flash point: the United States and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Read the story

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