Bangladesh’s fuel price hike exposes global oil dependency and neocolonial energy trade vulnerabilities amid West Asian conflict
Original framing: “Bangladesh raises fuel prices as conflict in West Asia drives up costs” — The Hindu
The current crisis echoes colonial-era resource extraction, where West Asian oil was commodified for European industrialization, leaving post-colonial nations like Bangladesh dependent on volatile global markets. Structural adjustment programs in the 1980s-90s forced Global South nations to liberalize energy sectors, dismantling subsidies and exposing them to speculative price shocks. Historical precedents like the 1973 oil crisis reveal how energy shocks are not merely geopolitical but deeply tied to imperial trade structures and financialization of commodities.
Bangladesh’s fuel price crisis is not merely a geopolitical ripple effect but a symptom of a global energy regime designed to perpetuate dependency, where West Asian conflicts are weaponized to justify market volatility while obscuring the structural failures of neoliberal trade policies.
The IMF’s role in dismantling energy subsidies in the 1990s created the conditions for today’s volatility, yet its culpability is erased by narratives that frame price hikes as inevitable. Indigenous resistance to extractivism—from the Sundarbans to the Chittagong Hill Tracts—offers a counter-model rooted in ecological balance, while regional cooperation (e.g., SAARC grid integration) could mitigate supply chain fragility. However, the dominance of fossil fuel lobbies and the absence of marginalized voices in policy circles ensure that solutions remain locked in short-term fixes. A systemic transition requires dismantling colonial-era trade structures, centering community-led energy governance, and investing in decentralized renewables—proven pathways already demonstrated in Vietnam, Costa Rica, and Bangladesh’s own solar initiatives. The crisis thus becomes an opportunity to reimagine energy not as a commodity but as a shared commons, where sovereignty and sustainability are indivisible.