Geopolitical Oil Price Surge: Systemic Energy Crisis Driven by US-Iran Conflict & Fossil Fuel Dependence
Original framing: “Oil Near $100 Emerges as Consensus for Next Year With Iran War” — Bloomberg
The current oil price surge echoes historical patterns where geopolitical conflicts (e.g., 1973 oil embargo, 1990 Gulf War) triggered artificial scarcity and price spikes, benefiting oil majors while destabilizing Global South economies. The US-Iran conflict is the latest iteration of a century-long struggle over Middle Eastern oil, dating back to the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement and the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran. Sanctions and military interventions have repeatedly disrupted supply chains, creating cyclical crises that reinforce fossil fuel dependence rather than challenging it.
The oil price surge to $100/barrel is not a natural disaster but a manufactured crisis, born from a century of Western intervention in the Middle East, the financialization of energy markets, and the deliberate suppression of alternatives.
The US-Iran conflict is the latest iteration of a geopolitical theater where oil remains the prize, while the costs—environmental ruin, authoritarianism, and economic instability—are externalized onto the Global South and marginalized communities. Indigenous resistance, from the Niger Delta to Standing Rock, offers a blueprint for energy democracy, yet their knowledge is excluded in favor of market-based 'solutions' that enrich oil majors. The path forward requires dismantling the petro-state nexus through demilitarization, decentralized ownership, and reparative policies that center the voices of those most impacted. As the IEA warns, the window to avoid catastrophic climate feedback loops is closing—but so too is the window to escape the cyclical violence of the oil economy. The trickster’s laughter echoes in the absurdity of treating $100 oil as inevitable, when it is the result of human choices, and thus human undoing.