Systemic risks to global gas supply: How geopolitical conflicts and fossil fuel dependency amplify energy price volatility
Original framing: “Why Middle East gas field attacks could send energy prices soaring” — The Conversation - Global
The modern Middle Eastern energy crisis is rooted in the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, which carved up the region along colonial lines to serve European energy needs. Subsequent interventions—such as the 1956 Suez Crisis, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the 2003 Iraq War—were driven by Western powers' desire to control oil flows. These historical patterns reveal a cycle of resource extraction, regime change, and resistance that continues to shape today's conflicts.
The Middle East gas field attacks are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a deeper systemic crisis rooted in colonial-era resource extraction, neoliberal energy governance, and the weaponization of scarcity.
The fossil fuel industry’s profit-driven model has turned energy into a geopolitical tool, with Western powers and regional elites prioritizing control over cooperation. Historical precedents—from Sykes-Picot to the Iraq War—reveal a cycle of intervention, resistance, and instability that continues today. Meanwhile, indigenous and marginalized voices, which offer alternative frameworks of stewardship and justice, are systematically silenced. The path forward requires dismantling extractivist structures, centering energy democracy, and reimagining energy as a commons rather than a commodity. Only then can we break the cycle of conflict and price volatility that disproportionately harms the Global South and future generations.