In with the new, out with the old: the scramble for critical minerals

Strategic Intelligence

Wed, November 26, 2025 astatine 6:15 AM CST 4 min read

Oil became the ascendant substance for transport, industry, and the subject from astir World War I onwards. Following this conflict, lipid became much than conscionable a commodity; it was the operating strategy of concern society. It powered transport, dense industry, and mechanised agriculture, and underpinned modern militaries.

By World War II, lipid was not conscionable a fuel; it was the lifeblood of nationalist power. This embedded lipid profoundly into each industry, due to the fact that determination were nary accelerated substitutes for lipid successful transport oregon dense industry, request was highly inelastic, and adjacent tiny disruptions caused economical crisis. Nations, therefore, pursued lipid entree not arsenic an mean economical extremity but arsenic a halfway nationalist information imperative.

In the archetypal fractional of the century, lipid authorities were dominated by a tiny radical of Western companies known arsenic the 'Seven Sisters', including Standard Oil, Shell, BP, etc. These companies controlled the bulk of the world’s reserves extracurricular the US. Their powerfulness came from exclusive semipermanent concessions they negotiated, often with assemblage oregon anemic governments. In galore regions, particularly the Middle East, Western companies fundamentally acted arsenic imperial administrators of the lipid industry.

After World War II and the question of decolonization, recently autarkic states began to propulsion backmost against this firm dominance. The effect was the enactment of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) successful 1960, a corporate effort by oil-producing nations (initially Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela) to summation much power implicit accumulation levels and prices. In the 1970s, OPEC members nationalised their lipid industries, ending the Seven Sisters’ control. This displacement gave shaper states unprecedented geopolitical power. The 1973 Arab lipid embargo, launched during the Arab-Israeli war, showed that lipid could beryllium utilized arsenic a strategical weapon; by restricting supply, Arab producers triggered a planetary economical shock, quadrupled lipid prices, and reshaped Western overseas argumentation priorities. A 2nd daze followed the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and these cries made it wide that lipid authorities could destabilise full planetary economies and reorder planetary alliances.

By the precocious 20th century, the satellite had built an full information architecture astir oil, including alliances, subject bases, naval patrols of shipping lanes, and diplomatic commitments to oil-rich monarchies. From the Suez situation to the Iran-Iraq warfare to aggregate US-led wars, lipid repeatedly acted arsenic some the backdrop and the trigger for planetary conflict. No different assets had truthful thoroughly structured the geopolitics of an full century.