Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century

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Daniel Yergin Books

• “The Allies floated to victory on a sea of oil.” – Lord Curzon
  • Access to oil resources was critical for the Allies’ military operations, fueling their ships, planes, and machinery; this provided the Allies with a mobility advantage over the Germans
• Hydrocarbons have been the engine of economic development
• “World War II was not an oil war, but there was an oil war within World War II.” – Daniel Yergin
  • When Hitler invaded Russia, he was not only going for Moscow but also for the oil fields in Baku
  • Admiral Nimitz said if the Japanese had come back a third time and hit the oil tanks, then World War II in the Pacific would have taken another two years
  • One reason why the Japanese Kamikaze flew into the aircraft carriers was to save fuel so that they did not have to fly back
• Energy security as a national strategic imperative tends to fall out of focus until it hits you in the face
• Warfare tends to be a beta-test environment for new technologies: World War I began with calvary and ended with tanks, airplanes, and motorcycles
• After World War I, there were fears that the country would run out of oil; to mitigate this fear, the American government began to support American companies that wanted to expand into the Middle East
• Six out of every seven barrels of oil used by the Allies in WWII were produced by the United States
• After World War II, all world leaders understood the significance of securing oil as a strategic resource
• Estimates suggest that by 2030, about 10% of electricity in the United States will go towards powering data centers; today, that figure is 4%

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

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Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, secular stagnation, the Middle East, Ukraine, how Xi and Putin think, and basically anything else that's happened since 1860.

It was a great honor to interview Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Prize - the best history of oil ever written (which makes it the best history of the 20th century ever written).

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.

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Timestamps

(00:00:00) – Beginning of the oil industry

(00:13:37) – World War I & II

(00:25:06) – The Middle East

(00:47:04) – Yergin’s conversations with Putin & Modi

(01:04:36) – Writing through stories

(01:10:26) – The renewable energy transition

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