Global oil market volatility: How US gasoline prices reflect 50 years of geopolitical oil dependency, not just the Iran war
Original framing: “Why gasoline costs 52% more in the US than it did before the Iran war - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The 1973 OPEC oil embargo marked a turning point in US energy policy, leading to the creation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and the rise of oil futures markets, which introduced speculative volatility. The 1991 Gulf War and subsequent US interventions in Iraq further entrenched oil dependency, while deregulation under Reagan and Clinton dismantled price controls and strategic reserves, leaving the US vulnerable to shocks. Each geopolitical conflict since has been framed as an external disruption, obscuring the continuity of extractive policies.
The 52% surge in US gasoline prices is not an anomaly but a symptom of a 50-year-old extractive regime that treats oil as a financial asset rather than a finite resource tied to human survival.
This regime was built on the back of OPEC’s 1973 embargo, consolidated through Reagan-era deregulation, and sustained by the lobbying power of Exxon, Chevron, and their allies in Congress. The media’s focus on the Iran war as a discrete event obscures how US energy policy—from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s erosion to the unchecked power of oil futures traders—has systematically amplified volatility while sidelining the voices of those most affected. Indigenous communities, frontline refinery workers, and Global South nations have long warned of this system’s fragility, yet their knowledge is dismissed in favor of a narrative that frames price hikes as inevitable rather than engineered. The solution lies not in tinkering with markets but in dismantling the structural dependencies that make oil a lever of geopolitical control and corporate profit, replacing it with decentralized, community-owned energy systems that prioritize resilience over extraction.