Essay

Roger Howard, the author of "The Oil Hunters: Exploration and Espionage in the Middle East," wrote an essay in the Sat/Sun WSJ. It is entitled "An Ode to Oil." It displays some fascinating reasoning. The essence is quite simple.

We, in America, are addicted to oil. But we also hold the technology to find more oil in these difficult times. Difficult because all the "easy" oil is gone and most of the existing fields are past their peak. Also difficult because the countries where those fields are,  those countries that lived of oil revenues have prospered for a long time and their populations have surged and now they need more dollars and more oil to keep feeding their own habits. 

That is one thing about oil, the suppliers are addicts too. Actually everyone is an addict including the pushers, who are the executives and investors of the big oil companies. These guys are mostly American. They hold the key to the technology. But I digress.

Let's go back to the argument. Howard says we are addicted and the suppliers need our technology to keep supplying us. They need to keep supplying us because otherwise they will starve. And that will be worse now than a few decades ago, because all this time they have benefited and now they have many more mouths to feed. Ergo, oil can be a stabilizing, peace-bringing force. Did you get that last part?

What Howard really means is we own the technology and we are the buyers so we are in the driver's seat. Our dependency is our strength. And since we are, by definition, the only and all that is good in the world, our strength means oil is the great pacifier of the 21st century. Everybody will have to listen to us -and by definition again, that is good, so he really says, everybody will have to be peaceful and happy.

Nil nove sub sole.