Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Trouble follows oil like a shimmering slick, challenging the ideals of a presumed enlightened world. Ever since Edwin Drake’s famous first find in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, the dirty side to oil rarely receives attention. A systematic disregard for others is standard in an industry that favours extraction over regulation, speed above safety, and profits before people. In the race to power the world, oil makes its own rules whatever the cost, including waging war to achieve its ends. To support a de facto post-World War Pax Americana, it is no coincidence US military incursions are connected to the world’s number-one commodity.

Despite attempts to keep the peace, war and instability are the norm in oil-rich regions. Conflicts between Iran and Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and civil wars within Iraq, Syria, and Libya are all drenched in the smell of oil as was the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the US occupation of Iraq. Large swathes of the Ecuadorian Amazon are contaminated, Nigeria remains impoverished despite vast oil reserves, and terrorist blowback continues after decades of American meddling in the Middle East. Restricted natural-gas pipelines and transit fees were the flashpoint for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Venezuela has been under siege for decades because of its enormous oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt and a short-sighted over-reliance on a single resource (over 90% of GDP from oil), where government-subsidized gas sold below cost (less than 50 cents to fill a tank) and food was cheaper to import than produce. Venezuela once extracted almost 3 million barrels per day at the height of production before US sanctions in 2019 gutted its ability to trade on the open market, ultimately reducing output to under 1 million barrels per day.

Oil scars all with its black-gold luster, turning the world into a giant chessboard as a silent war is waged for control in corporate boardrooms and government offices, spreading damage everywhere. The precarious world order was shattered for good, however, under cover of darkness in the early hours of January 3, 2026, when Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife were extracted by US military forces and charged with drug-trafficking crimes, spooking oil markets and raising sovereignty concerns around the globe. With a rogue US in charge, nowhere is safe. The livelihood and safety of billions of people hang in the balance.

To understand the plight of those scarred by oil, one need ask only one question: “Who owns the oil?” In Crude World, Peter Maass lists the options: “Is the oil owned by the [one] who works the land that sits atop the oil? The surrounding community? The state in which the community is located? The federal government in a capital hundreds or thousands of miles away? The foreign company that invested millions of dollars to find it?”[1] Not a simple question, but one that underpins the entire global economy.

One could argue that international crises have followed oil ever since the 1960 creation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) following discussions between the Venezuelan Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo and the Saudi head of the newly established Directorate of Oil and Mining Affairs Abdullah Tariki. Pérez Alfonzo was the architect of a 50/50 split between oil companies and national governments, while Tariki was known as “Red Sheikh” for his support of Egyptian leader and pan-Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser as well as his criticisms of the Saudi royal family. Both Venezuela and Saudi Arabia were upset at the low returns their two countries received from foreign oil companies managing their main resource.

Meeting for the first time in 1959 at an Arab Petroleum Congress in Cairo, the idea of a producers’ group was hatched, before further meetings the following year in Baghdad sealed the deal as leaders from Iran, Iraq (representing the Arab League), and Kuwait signed up. As one historian put it, “[Pérez] Alfonzo provided the rationalization; Tariki, a charismatic speaker, the fire.”

The initial impetus for OPEC’s formation was a 10% unilateral cut of oil prices by the Seven Sisters (BP, Standard Jersey, Socony, Texaco, Socal, Gulf, and Shell), who controlled most of the global market, ostensibly to undercut the Soviet Union, whose output had doubled in the previous 5 years such that Soviet production had risen to almost 60% that of the Middle East. The move, however, drastically dented the revenues of the oil-producing countries. The final straw was another 8% cut, led by Standard Jersey.

OPEC transformed international relations, giving oil-producing nations a say in global sales for the first time. Although 50-50 arrangements had already existed in a number of oil-producing countries as begun in Venezuela, the oil-flush states wanted more of the pie, their pie as they began to clamor. As noted after OPEC’s formation, “It was quite clear from the start that the price cuts might precipitate the establishment of what some delegates chose to call a cartel to confront a cartel.”[3]

In creating OPEC, Pérez Alfonzo stole a page from the Texas Railroad Commission playbook, which first regulated oil prices in the US in the 1930s during the East Texas oil glut when prices dropped to as little as 10 cents a barrel.[4] OPEC was using the same playbook as the first great cartel king, John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil once controlled over 90% of the US oil business until it was broken up by a landmark antitrust case in 1911, creating 34 “Baby Standards,” the largest Standard Oil of New Jersey (renamed Esso and then Exxon), Standard Oil of New York (renamed Mobil), and Standard Oil of California (renamed Socal and then Chevron). McClure’s investigative journalist and one-time Titusville resident Ida Tarbell noted how Standard’s economic grip was “so complete that the price of oil, both crude and refined, is actually issued from its headquarters!”[5]

OPEC strategies have varied over time, including production cuts to raise prices (via member quotas) or flooding the market to lower prices and increase market share to undercut the competition (via unlimited member production), for example, to derail high-cost modern producers of shale gas and oil sands and the now competitive renewable technologies of wind and solar. With other oil regions producing more – Russia,........

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