Geopolitical Resource Scramble in the Context of Peak Oil
In his 15 May 2026 article, Resource Scramble, James Howard Kunstler discusses current geopolitical events in the context of peak oil. He states:
The primary resource all nations scramble for is oil. Without lavish supplies of oil, you can't have an advanced techno-industrial economy and, as the feckless Eurolanders learned the hard way, there really isn't an adequate substitute for oil. The flow of oil depends on economically producible reserves of oil country-by-country, but also on geographic advantage, as we are learning just now in the Hormuz crisis.
Current data show that:
- Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (AMWR) recoverable reserves are 7.7 - 10 billion barrels, yet the United States consumes 7.5 billion barrels per year.
- Venezuela's projected production is less than a million barrels per day, yet the US uses 20.5 million billion barrels per day.
- Russia's recoverable oil is 80 million barrels.
- China uses 17 million barrels per day, but imports 70 percent of that. The Iran situation is heavily impacting China.
As Gail Tverberg observed on OurFiniteWorld:
Europe's crude oil production started its permanent decline in 2001. Asia-Pacific's production hit a maximum in 2010, and it has been declining since. Africa's peak oil production took place in 2008, and it has been mostly declining since.
Kunstler writes:
As has been evident for some time, US interests are increasingly alienated from Euroland's interests, and better aligned with Russia's interests. Europe is demonstrably insane these days, roiling with loose talk as it whirls around the drain. Russia, under V. Putin, looks more like the adult in the room. Even Russia's military operation in Ukraine looks rational if you consider how the EU and the CIA started the damn thing in the first place circa 2014 for the very purpose of provoking Russia.
Mr. Trump has yearned to normalize relations with Russia since he stepped on-stage in 2016, to the great consternation of America's neocons, CIA shadow-meisters, and the born-again communists running the Democratic Party (who seem to resent Russia ditching Marxism-Leninism thirty-five years ago). This week, the US and China have mutually proposed becoming "partners" rather than rivals on the world scene...
More information on the relationship of energy to geopolitics can be found at the extensively-researched OurFiniteWorld. Also, while President Trump says were are overflowing with petroleum capacity, there are various qualities of oil, and not all oil is equally refined and usable. We do, however, seem to have a lot of natural gas. See Crude Oil Types: A Beginner’s Complete Guide 2025.