Geopolitics of Petroleum

Neither did Columbus discover America nor North America discover petroleum, but the first one allowed the currents of Western civilization to flow into the New World and the other made fuel the core of capitalism’s prosperity.

In 1859, Americans successfully drilled the first wells for commercial purposes. Then, they quickly refined mass production of the automobile, thus creating — on an unimagined scale — a civilization based on the consumption of hydrocarbons. No product has so influenced the development of mankind, and none may cause such major misfortunes.

The American economic miracle was based on the connection between the dynamism brought about by economic liberalism — practiced in an immense territory which was extraordinarily rich and open to migration — and the cheap and abundant source of energy that promoted a long era of economic prosperity. For more than a century, the United States sustained its economy and its development, even its empire, on petroleum — of which, for more than 100 years, it was the top producer and exporter.

Nevertheless, petroleum has turned into the Achilles Heel of the United States, which possesses all weapons except one: petroleum. Forty percent of the energy and nearly 100 percent of the fuel that Americans use is imported.

According to some writers, the decadence of the United States began in 1973 when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — comprised of 13 third-world countries, seven Arab and some tiny — defied the United States by imposing an embargo and establishing its prices and conditions on the West. Since then, petroleum has played an important role in the world’s geopolitics.

Nowadays, 60 percent of the global petroleum reserves are concentrated in Persian Gulf countries. This proportion constantly increases — not only because new wells are drilled every day in this region, but because other countries’ reserves are rapidly being drained. In 1950, the United States produced all the petroleum it needed and became the first global exporter. At present, it produces less than 30 percent of what it needs and its dependence, instead of diminishing, is increasing even more.

Petroleum is essential not only to keeping the giant American economy going, but also for the operation of its huge military apparatus, which consumes about 500 million barrels annually. If the Pentagon were a country, it would be in 35th place on the world list of 200 countries for oil consumption. The imperial elites have this information and are not unaware of the fact that if the Strait of Hormuz were closed, and Venezuela, Mexico and Nigeria were to cease supplying petroleum, the U.S. economy and military would collapse in ruins.

The bad news is that these empires behave as such. For the United States — which, in spite of crises and other symptoms of decadence, is still very far away from a critical point — it is more viable and profitable to control current petroleum reserves than to invest in extremely expensive oil exploration or in alternative sources which, in any case, can be undertaken without haste. Despite the exuberant prices of petroleum, America only spends about 10 percent of its GDP on it. Therefore, the problem is not economic, but one of security.

The American strategy has been developed since the 1970s, when other situations arose — such as Cold War risks, the OPEC petroleum embargo, the expansionist boldness of the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, which brought a radical Islamic movement to power with which the country has still not properly grappled — that caused President Jimmy Carter, in 1980, to propose the doctrine that “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

A peculiarity of petroleum is that more than 70 percent of its proven reserves are in the Muslim countries of the Persian Gulf, in the Middle East, which is the most conflict-ridden region of the world. This is the place where the threat of war has been constant for 60 years. It’s a context in which local conflicts take on global relevance and where the existence of Israel places all the countries on a collision course with the United States.

Insofar as the United States is about to embark on its most complicated and greatest military adventure since the Korean War, there is no strategic issue other than petroleum which should be its major priority at the moment.

The geopolitics of petroleum has two components: One is peaceful, while the other is military.

Let’s wait and see. The future will tell us.