Review of The Prize by Daniel Yergan

　
“The Prize is mastery,” according to Winston Churchill as he made the far - sighted decision to switch the British navy from locally produced coal to imported oil. This assessment of oil and its role appears to be much further reaching than Churchill could ever have imagined from the personal to the political to the economic. Oil in the 20th century is your ticket to mastery or destruction depending on your relationship to it.
The author, Daniel Yergan, describes three major themes in the history of oil since its rise as a global commodity. The first is economic; the rise of oil as the worlds largest business. According to Yergan, “of the top twenty companies in the fortune 500 seven are oil companies.” He makes clear that, in the 20th century, the rise and fall of the price of oil spells the difference between economic prosperity and inflation induced recession. In other words, as the 1970s oil shocks and the present spike in energy costs shows the prize of oil equals mastery of global markets.
The second theme of petroleum history is the political. So much of our geopolitics could be better understood as a global struggle for access to oil. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was to protect their access to petroleum reserves in the East Indies as Japan had to more than 95% of energy resources, and they were in great need of oil to continue the war effort. Similarly, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in WWII may have been successful had he not had to divert so many resources toward securing oil fields in the Caucasus. The list goes on to include the Suez canal crisis of 1956, Saddams invasion of Kuwait, and the overthrow of the Shah in Iran which Yergan notes is proof that oil can sometimes be fools gold as it led to the Shahs downfall despite his massive supply. However, as a general rule once again, as was the case in the economic sphere, control of oil equals mastery of political realities.
The final theme of petroleum may be the most important to the everyday person, and that is the transformation of the human race in a social sense into a “hydrocarbon society” meaning that our very lifestyles hinge upon oil from the cars we drive, to the fertilizers that bring us our food, to the plastics that makeup so many of the products we depend on. The reaction to this social dependence on oil and its negative effects environmentally from global climate change, to the destruction of ozone, to smog that pollutes our cities pitted against the so called right to consume; the author notes is one of the great clashes of our time. It seems in this final theme of oil history, it is not he who controls oil who gains mastery but oil which very much wields mastery over us.
The first chapter of Yergen’s thorough description of the history of oil in the 20th century tells the story of the very deliberate efforts of men like George Bissell and Edwin Drake to make “rock oil” (as it was known to distinguish it from other types of oil like vegetable oil) an economically viable source of illumination to replace existing forms which were either to expensive like town gas or inferior like camphene, a derivative of turpentine. They faced many obstacles from local skepticism to lack of funds, but were able to transform society in several distinct ways. First, the way people illuminated their homes and work places allowing for increased production. Second, they created a massive industry which would eventually dominate all others but initially transformed the regions of western Pennsylvania where the oil was being pumped. And lastly, they would eventually have a hand in changing the way human beings traveled. While the author takes great care to show that Bissell and Drake were not the first to use petroleum as an illuminator (kerosene was being made from oil in small amounts at the time) they were the ones who created the means of drilling which made it an economically viable industry. At the end of the chapter, Yergan alludes to the chaos of the new industry. He talks about the dysfunction in getting oil from the ground to the backwards methods of getting it to refineries, and eludes to the organization that will come in the future in the form of massive monopolies like Standard Oil.
Critical analysis of Yergans contentions about the impact of global oil are difficult to make as his presumption that oil control is equivalent to mastery is supported not only by the history he has written, but all the more by current events. The current Bush administration showed just how significant oil is in geopolitics by its choice to target Iraq in the war on terror instead of our important oil ally Saudi Arabia whose citizens made up the majority of the 9/11 hijackers and who’s government actually held a telethon for the terrorist group Hamas. It is also a fair presumption to say that security of oil in Iraq was a motivator of our invasion there, as documents written in part by Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as well as a myriad of other top Bush Administration officials in 1997 echo a desire to invade Iraq just for that purpose. Despite the current focus on oil as a chief motivator in geopolitics one could argue that Yergan overstates the case a bit. While oil is certainly a motivator, the question remains as to whether or not it is a chief motivator. While the Bush Administration may have been concerned about oil security, the majority of Americans supported the War in Iraq because of an apparent national security risk in the form of weapons of mass destruction. Equally, the two genocides of the 20th and 21st centuries in the Sudan and Rwanda were more motivated by ethnic distrust and scarce food and water then oil. Lastly, while oil has had an effect in triggering recession; it is global banking and finance companies which historically have led to the largest economic changes from the great depression to the junk bond crisis. Oil and energy, in general, are certainly shapers of our social, economic, and political realities, but security of self, food, and water, and even religion may remain the preeminent movers of global action.