Oil has shaped wars, toppled governments and warped global power for over a century and its grip is only growing more dangerous as the world struggles to break free, writesMel de Silva.

WHENEDWIN DRAKEstruck oil in Pennsylvania in 1859, refiners celebrated the kerosene but didn't quite know what to do with all the worthless gasoline.

Theyburned it off, or dumped it in rivers with predictably hazardous results. However, within 50 years, that worthless byproduct, along with a range of oil distillates, has become the hidden architecture of modern life and the trigger for war.

Oil didnt just fuel the modern world; it reorganised global power.

Oil as the original power broker for our modern world

Pennsylvanias early success sparked a global race. By the early 1900s, discoveries across four continents were reshaping industrial and imperial ambitions. When explorers funded by AustralianBritish entrepreneurWilliam Knox DArcystruck oil in Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1908, Britain quickly recognised the strategic stakes. It bought acontrolling sharein the AngloPersian Oil Company (ancestor of BP), securing a foothold in the regions future.

A war for oil isnt just fuelling conflict its torching the planet, accelerating emissions and burying climate action under the rubble of geopolitics.

Then the collapse of theOttoman Empireafter World War I opened a new geopolitical contest for the Middle East. TheSykesPicot Agreementcarved borders with resource control in mind and the1928 Achnacarry Agreementformalised a Western oil cartel. The British and the Soviet Unioninvaded Iran during World War IIandinstalled a ruleraligned with Western interests.

Determined to reduce foreign control over Iranian resources, former Prime MinisterMohammad Mosaddeghsought to nationalise theAnglo-Persian Oil Companyin 1951. Britain responded with an embargo and legal pressure. When the International Court of Justicedeclined to intervene, Britain turned to the United States for more direct intervention.

Thus, in 1953, the CIA and MI6 ran acoupthat removed Mosaddegh and restored the Shah. Nationalisation was quashed and the Shah suppressed all subsequent political dissent.

Geopolitics has a short memory, history doesnt

Under the1957 Atoms for Peace programme, the United States actively provided Iran with nuclear education and technology. But along came the1979 Iranian revolutionand anti-Western theocracy replaced the Western-backed Shah. Spotting an opportunity,Saddam Husseininvaded Iran in1980, with thebacking of Western governments.

U.S. oil production had peaked in1972, the 1973 embargo had shaken the West, and theCarter Doctrinehad declared the Persian Gulf a vital U.S. interest to be defended by force. Revolutionary Iran was a threat not just ideologically but strategically and Saddam Hussein arrived on the scene as the instrument of containment.

However, when Saddam Hussein went on to invade Kuwait, he crossed a line that threatened Western control of the oil supply. A U.S.-led coalition intervened, citing international law and Kuwaiti sovereignty. Yet the unspoken calculus was clear. The absorption of Kuwait and potentially Saudi Arabia into Iraq would have given Saddam leverage over global energy markets that no U.S. administration could tolerate.

Meanwhile, the nuclear technology the U.S. had once encouraged became the justification for decades ofsanctions and diplomacy, culminating in a2015 dealthat the first Trump Administration abandoned in 2018.

The ecological destruction and the poisoning of the population continue with the attacks by the U.S. and Israel on Iran, as well as with Iranian attacks on the Gulf states.

In March 2025, the U.S. Director of National Intelligencetold Congressthat Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Yet three months later, Iran wasdeclared in breachof non-proliferation obligations,and Israel and the United States launchedmilitary strikeson Iranian nuclear facilities.

Taken together, these episodes show how oil politics bends history: the U.S. backed Iraqs invasion of Iran to protect its energy interests and later attacked Iran over a nuclear program it had once encouraged. When power moves, it often leaves contradictions in its wake.

Venezuela: When power no longer needs a mask

A similar pattern was unfolding in Venezuela just weeks earlier, albeit with less effort to disguise motives.

In January 2026, U.S. special forces captured Venezuelan PresidentNicols Maduroon narcoterrorism charges. President Trump announced that the U.S. wouldrunVenezuela and access its oil reserves, roughly a fifth of the world's total.

For decades, American and British firms developed Venezuelan oil. But Venezuela graduallyreclaimed its resourcesthrough legislation, OPEC membership and eventual nationalisation in 1976. The notion thatVenezuela stole American oil, as members of the Trump Administration have suggested, requires a creative interpretation of historical records and disregard for the principle ofPermanent Sovereignty over Natural Resourcesestablished byUN General Assembly resolution 1803in 1962. Yet power rarely waits for legal justification.

The stories we tell that make extraction feel like civilisation

Military and economic power don't operate in a vacuum. Theyre supported by cultural narratives about who resources belong to and who is entitled to them.

Oil companies like BP once cast Iranian oil as anatural prize for Western enterprise. Advertisements portrayed Western engineers as heroic modernisers, while Iranians appeared mainly as labourers or background characters in their own countrys story. AsEdward Saidobserved inOrientalism, the underlying assumption is that the Western consumer is entitled to the worlds resources in a way the colonised other is not.

This cultural infrastructure still shapes assumptions in wealthy countries about growth and abundance, while refusing to reckon seriously with the physical limits of a finite planet that sustains us. A larger share for some means a smaller share for others. That uncomfortable arithmetic is the cultural soil in which imperialism keeps regenerating.

Yet change is in the air. Slowly and imperfectly, we may learn to say no to imperialism's next iteration.

A disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could leave Australia facing fuel shortages within weeks, exposing just how fragile our energy security has become.

Why oil dependence is becoming strategically impossible

Beyond the ethical arguments, there is a purely strategic one. The longer we stay in a rigged game (pun intended), the higher the stakes become.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz in 2026 demonstrated this vividly. A single chokepoint was disrupted by a state with limited naval capacity, using mines, drones and insurance pressure. The architecture of global energy security can be throttled in a matter of days.

This is not a resilient system.

The world has never had a clearer strategic reason to accelerate the transition away from oil. Yet the forces that benefit most from the current system are among the most powerful actors shaping the response. Oil is leverage and those who hold power intend to hold oil.

Using resource power to build resilience instead of dependence

However, history also offers examples of countries that used their resource power to build resilience rather than entrench dependence.

Norway channelled its oil wealth into a sovereign wealth fund now worth over $2 trillion, treating oil revenue as agift to future generationsrather than a windfall for the present. Saudi Arabia, throughVision 2030, is using oil proceeds to build economic and technological capacity for a postoil world.

The distinction between resource power used to perpetuate dependence and resource power used to build resilience is the central choice facing every oil-dependent nation. Whether we can make that transition before the next round of resource struggles reshapes the global order is, perhaps, the central question of our time.

Mel de Silvais an environmental sustainability advisor who has led decarbonisation and climate resilience programs for some of Australia's largest corporations and government agencies.