Season 2

1966-04-30 · 51m

Peter Thornton has led Mogul to a major offshore find in the Caribbean and expects promotion to London, but the post goes to newcomer Alec Stewart, who arrives to tell him he must stay on as Regional Supervisor. Thornton's restless wife Steve, longing for home, begins an affair with diving instructor Tiger. Then a rig leg sinks into the seabed, and Tiger is the only diver at hand.

1966-05-07 · 49m

Mogul is sponsoring Canadian Bob Stacey's attempt on the world water speed record, but after repeated failures and delays Brian Stead wants to withdraw. With his own career tied to the project, Alec Stewart wins a final week's grace and travels to Sweden's Lake Vattern. There he finds a driver haunted by a bad crash at Indianapolis, and doubts grow about both his nerve and the boat.

1966-05-14 · 49m

Touring the Caribbean as Mogul's new regional supervisor, Peter Thornton is in Trinidad when one of the exploration crew is killed in a blast. His fiancée Thea then arrives convinced he is still alive and sets out to find him. Raised in a strict religious sect and estranged from her family, she comes to lean on Thornton as the island prepares for carnival.

1966-05-21 · 47m

When the small petrol company FMP starts eating into Mogul's sales, Alec Stewart and Peter Thornton trace its success to Ian Bixby, its newly appointed managing director. Brian Stead decides Mogul should simply hire him, though Stewart has misgivings. Bixby also holds a valuable stake in FMP, and Stewart and Jane Webb track him to Romania, where he is in talks to acquire petrol from fields that Mogul lost to nationalisation.

1966-05-28 · 50m

Peter Thornton travels to Riba, a former British colony in East Borneo, to bring home Geoffrey Arles, who manages the Mogul oilfield there, taking his wife Steve along in a last effort to save their marriage. The Prime Minister wants Arles kept in place and has twice stopped Mogul from handing the post to a local man. Thornton finds his reasoning hard to accept and resolves to get Arles out.

1966-06-04 · 49m

An airliner comes down near London Airport on the first flight powered by a new Mogul fuel, and Brian Stead asks Alec Stewart to establish whether the company bears any blame. Reluctant at first to interfere with the official inquiries, Stewart is gradually drawn deeper into the investigation. The airline's representative, Monserrat Vera, insists the pilot was far too experienced to have made a mistake.

1966-06-11 · 49m

Jane Webb and Peter Thornton expect a restful voyage home aboard a Mogul supertanker, until anonymous letters start threatening to destroy the ship. As events foretold in the letters begin to happen, suspicion falls on Captain Kenny, his young second wife, his daughter and her husband, chief engineer Arthur Frost. Thornton has to find the writer before the tanker reaches Southampton, where the last threat says it will be blown up.

1966-06-18 · 50m

Brian Stead plans to withdraw Mogul from North Sea exploration and sell its concessions to the state Fuel Board. Then young seismic surveyor Roy Binns claims Mogul has supplied false data to inflate their value, and a scandal erupts. While Stead sets Peter Thornton and others to work on the affair, Jane Webb finds herself falling for Roy, putting her loyalty to Mogul under strain.

1966-06-25 · 49m

After his divorce, Peter Thornton spends a month's leave in Australia with his mother and the friends he grew up with. Wary of new attachments, he is nonetheless drawn to Ruth Saire, and is then offered the post of running a new Queensland state oil commission. When he discovers that Ruth works for the minister behind the offer, he suspects she has been used to win him over.

1966-07-02 · 49m

Alec Stewart flies to Saigon for talks with Gareth Williams, head of Mogul's local marketing office, and is soon caught up in the realities of the Vietnam war. A youth who offered him black market currency is arrested for a bomb attack he did not commit and faces execution. Ignoring advice that nothing can be done, Stewart sets about finding someone with the influence to save him.

1966-07-09 · 48m

When a Mogul well in Qualar catches fire, Alec Stewart, who happens to be passing through with Jane Webb, takes charge. Peter Thornton is sent from Rome to deal with it, only to find Stewart has already flown in renowned American firefighter Edgar Paley. Thornton resents being sidelined, dislikes Paley's methods and is further irritated by the attention Paley pays to Jane.

1966-07-16 · 49m

Still unsettled by his son's death, Willy Izard is tempted by a job offer from an American oil broker in New York. Brian Stead is alarmed, both for Mogul's secrets and for Izard himself, after Alec Stewart learns that the Americans have a habit of hiring and then dropping men like him. Stead quietly holds back a deadline message and sends Izard off with Jane Webb to present the prizes at a Mogul car rally.

1966-07-23 · 48m

Brian Stead sends Peter Thornton to Tyneside to order a new supertanker, but the yard cannot deliver within the year Mogul needs. Faster delivery depends on two rival unions merging and ending demarcation. One leader backs the idea for his own political reasons, while veteran Sam Jardine opposes it on principle, and Thornton's involvement with Jardine's daughter Ellen complicates the struggle.

1966-07-30 · 49m

Rumours suggest the British government will cancel the Bald Eagle missile project, which would expose the millions Mogul has secretly overspent developing its TDX fuel, spending Brian Stead approved without the board's consent. Alec Stewart finds that the project's main opponent is Tom Sinclair, a senior Treasury official. With board member Price asking awkward questions, Stewart and Stead look for ways to bring pressure on Sinclair and the minister.

1966-08-06 · 46m

Brian Stead visits Tembigo to inspect Mogul's costly new semi-submersible rig, the Moaia, and tells Peter Thornton he is to be transferred back to London. Meteorologist Denny Carson is tracking Hurricane Sophia, which looks likely to miss the island, though some of the crew feel uneasy about the rig. When the storm changes course, Thornton finds himself aboard the Moaia as it bears the full force.

1966-08-13 · 50m

Dibouti's government takes over Mogul's Dekla refinery and harbour, a move engineered by its British economic adviser John Hallmaine. Brian Stead flies out with Alec Stewart, a legal adviser, Jane Webb and Dowding, a Foreign Office man whose purpose he distrusts. Stead offers Dibouti a stake while keeping control for Mogul, but the delegation will accept nothing less than full state ownership.

1966-08-20 · 48m

Mogul is choosing a site for a new Mediterranean refinery, and Brian Stead has engaged Dr Newman, an outside computer consultant, to find the best location. Michael Rennane withholds Italian marketing figures to protect his own plans for expansion in Italy, and Stead goes over his head. As Rome links market entry to a refinery in southern Italy, Alec Stewart is caught between Rennane, Mogul's Italian agent Count Solferini and the computer's verdict.

1966-08-27 · 50m

Brian Stead sends Peter Thornton to a remote desert pumping station in Libya, where two engineers are backing rival plans to re-equip the pipeline. Bruce MacCallum favours a bold automated system but is drinking heavily, while Andrew Garvie offers a cautious, carefully costed scheme. Thornton must judge both plans and both men, and soon learns that rival company Zenith has been courting Mogul's staff.

1966-09-03 · 47m

Alec Stewart takes part in the Tour of Europe rally alongside temperamental professional driver Ray Kennedy, a publicity venture Brian Stead backs over Willy Izard's objections. Kennedy's reckless driving soon alarms Stewart, and in a French village he knocks a young girl off her bicycle. Held by local policeman Giraud while her condition remains uncertain, the two men turn on each other as Mogul tries to keep the story quiet.

1966-09-10 · 49m

Reports reach London that a Soviet state enterprise is building a camp to drill on Svalbard's Edge Island, right beside Mogul's concession. Brian Stead sends Peter Thornton to find out whether the Russians are encroaching. After contriving a visit to the Soviet camp with engineer Nina Kapler, Thornton has mechanic Per Heiden take a detour across the ice by snowcat to check the boundary, a decision that puts both men in danger.

1966-09-17 · 50m

Alec Stewart is sent to Llaneris in South Wales to steer Mogul's plans for a £30 million refinery and deep-water dock past local opposition. Stewart finds the preservationist campaign led by Grace Trevor, an old wartime acquaintance, while dockers' shop steward Elwyn Leonard fears the scheme will cost jobs in the long run. With nationalist Gareth Morris also on the attack, the matter goes to a public enquiry.

1966-09-24 · 50m

Alan Prescott, who runs Mogul's Inverness depot, comes to Head Office in London for an executive training course. A dinner invitation from Alec Stewart, once a young pilot under his wartime command, convinces Prescott that a senior post in London awaits him, along with an escape from a life he finds stale. As he pursues the idea and pays court to Jane Webb, trouble is brewing back at his depot.

1966-10-01 · 47m

With an annual general meeting approaching and nothing to report from Petawanga Lake in Ontario, Brian Stead sends Peter Thornton to find out why the survey team has drawn a blank. Thornton finds the camp split between cautious senior geologist John Horler and the impatient Brian Skinner. The arrival of Frank Marshall, a rich Texan hunter, and his wife Honey at a nearby camp adds to the strain.

1966-10-08 · 50m

At Mogul's research laboratory in southern France, scientist John Bartlett finds that a new agricultural insecticide has damaged the brains of laboratory monkeys. Fearing harm to humans or military misuse, he goes over his superior Macann's head to Brian Stead, who sends Alec Stewart to silence him. When Bartlett threatens to go to the press, Roz Stewart is asked to talk to him, and a troubled private life comes to light.

1966-10-15 · 50m

An anonymous letter tells Brian Stead that Geoffrey Brady, a rising personnel manager newly moved to the Lisbury petrochemical works, is a Communist agitator. Alec Stewart looks into his past and finds a ruthless careerist who has cut himself off from his family. Peter Thornton then goes undercover as Brady's disaffected assistant, where poor conditions at the resins plant are stirring up trouble on the shop floor.

1966-10-22 · 44m

Under pressure from the Ministry of Power and lagging behind its rivals' North Sea gas finds, Mogul loses its main rig to storm damage. Peter Thornton secures early delivery of a new rig, the Ocean Pearl, and, against the chief geologist's advice, insists on drilling a block of his own choosing, with Alec Stewart backing him. Brian Stead makes both men answerable, and offshore a run of setbacks feeds the superstitions of toolpusher Al Nillson's crew.