In Hindsight: Oil Prices

High prices at gas pumps worldwide have reopened the debate about oil dependency. FP dips into its archive for a look at this issue through the years.

"The world 'energy crisis' or 'energy shortage' is a fiction. But belief in the fiction is a fact. It makes people accept higher oil prices as imposed by nature, when they are really fixed by collusion. And sellers of all fuels, whatever their conflicts, can stand in harmony on the platform of high oil prices."
-M.A. Adelman
"Is the Oil Shortage Real?"
(Winter 1972–73)

"The world ‘energy crisis’ or ‘energy shortage’ is a fiction. But belief in the fiction is a fact. It makes people accept higher oil prices as imposed by nature, when they are really fixed by collusion. And sellers of all fuels, whatever their conflicts, can stand in harmony on the platform of high oil prices."
-M.A. Adelman
"Is the Oil Shortage Real?"
(Winter 1972–73)

"The oil supply is vulnerable to terrorism, accident, warfare, and extortion. The sudden loss of Persian Gulf oil for a year could stagger the world’s economy like no event since the depression of the 1930s."
-Joseph S. Nye Jr.
"Energy Nightmares"
(Fall 1980)

"The strategic importance of Middle Eastern oil makes it a safe bet that the United States will seek to increase rather than diminish its influence in that region. Not only Iraq but even Saudi Arabia itself — already an unstable ally and a breeding ground of the al Qaeda terrorist network — may have to become de facto U.S. protectorates in the foreseeable future."
-Niall Ferguson
"Think Again: Power"
(January/February 2003)

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