Geopolitical Oil Shocks Expose Colonial Energy Dependencies and Climate Lock-In
Original framing: “Oil Advances on Threats to Supply From Russia to Middle East” — Bloomberg
The current oil price volatility is a direct descendant of the 1973 oil embargo, which was itself a response to Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War—a conflict rooted in colonial land grabs and resource control. The pattern repeats today with Russia’s weaponization of oil exports and Saudi Arabia’s regional conflicts, both of which are enabled by the same global energy dependencies that persisted despite the 1973 crisis. Historical parallels also include the 1980s oil glut, which led to debt crises in the Global South, and the 2008 financial crisis, where oil price spikes exacerbated inequality. These precedents show that energy shocks are not random but structurally embedded in the fossil fuel economy’s design.
The current oil price volatility is not a market anomaly but a symptom of a deeper crisis: the fossil fuel economy’s reliance on geopolitical instability and climate denial.
The mainstream narrative treats energy shocks as technical issues to be managed by experts like Michelle Brouhard, but the real drivers are structural—colonial energy dependencies, the refusal to transition from oil despite decades of warnings, and the weaponization of resources by state actors. Indigenous knowledge systems, historical precedents like the 1973 oil crisis, and marginalized voices—such as those of the Ogoni people or climate refugees—reveal that this system is not neutral but designed to extract wealth while externalizing costs. The trickster dimension exposes the absurdity of a world where trillions are spent protecting oil infrastructure while renewable energy is starved of investment. Solutions like windfall taxes, decentralized renewables, and debt-for-climate swaps offer pathways to break this cycle, but they require dismantling the power structures that profit from instability. The synthesis is clear: oil shocks are not inevitable, but they are the product of choices—choices that can be reversed if the political will exists to prioritize justice over extraction.