battlefield in 1916. It was initially code-named the “cistern” but was soon better known as the “tank.” As oil went to Europe to support the mobility of Allied forces, a gasoline famine gripped the United States. In fact, 1918 saw the highest gasoline prices, in inflation-adjusted terms, ever recorded in the United States. In order to help relieve the shortage, a national appeal went out for “Gasolineless Sundays,” on which people would abstain from driving. In response, President Wilson ruefully announced, “I suppose I must walk to church.”
By the time the war ended, no one could doubt oil’s strategic importance. Lord Curzon, soon to become Britain’s foreign secretary, summed it up: “The Allied cause had floated to victory upon a wave of oil.” But for the second time, the fear took hold that the world was running out of oil—partly driven by the surging demand growth from the internal combustion engine. Between 1914 and 1920, the number of registered motor vehicles in the United States grew fivefold. “Within the next two to five years,” declared the director of the United States Bureau of Mines, “the oil fields of this country will reach their maximum production, and from that time on we will face an ever-increasing decline.” President Wilson lamented, “There seemed to be no method by which we could assure ourselves of the necessary supply at home and abroad.”5
Securing new supplies became a strategic objective. That is one of the major reasons that, after World War I, the three easternmost oil-prospective provinces of the now-defunct Ottoman Turkish Empire—one Kurdish, one Sunni Arab, and one Shia Arab—were cobbled together to create the new state of Iraq.
The permanent shortage did not last very long. New areas opened up and new technologies emerged, the most noteworthy being seismic technology. Dynamite explosions set off sonic waves, enabling explorers to identify prospective underground formations and map geological features that might have trapped oil and gas. Major new discoveries were made in the United States and other countries. By the end of the 1920s, instead of permanent shortage, the market was beginning to swim in oil. The discovery of the East Texas oil field in 1931 turned the surplus into an enormous glut: oil plunged temporarily to as little as ten cents a barrel; during the Great Depression some gasoline stations gave away whole chickens as premiums to lure in customers.
The outbreak of World War II turned that glut into an enormous and immensely valuable strategic reserve. Out of seven billion barrels used by the Allies, six billion came from the United States. Oil proved to be of key importance in so many different aspects of the struggle. Japan’s fear of lack of access to oil—which, in the words of the chief of its Naval General Staff, would turn its battleships into “nothing more than scarecrows”—was one of the critical factors in Japan’s decision to go to war. Hitler made his fateful decision to invade the Soviet Union not only because he hated the Slavs and the communists, but also so that he could get his hands on the oil resources of the Caucasus. The German U-boat campaign twice came close to cutting the oil line from North America to Europe. The Allies, in turn, were determined to disrupt the oil supplies of both Germany and Japan. Inadequate supplies of fuel put the brakes on both General Erwin Rommel’s campaign in North Africa (“Shortage of petrol,” he wrote his wife; “It’s enough to make one weep”) and General George Patton’s sweep across France after the D Day landing.6
World War II ended, like World War I, with a profound recognition of the strategic significance of oil—and, for the third time, widespread fear about running out of oil. Those fears were heightened by the fact that, immediately after the war, the United States crossed a great strategic divide. No longer self-sufficient in petroleum, it became a net importer. But for a number of years, quotas limited imports to about 10 percent of total consumption.
Once again, the specter of global shortage receded, as the opening up of the vast fields of the Middle East and the development of new technologies led to oversupply and falling prices. This downward trend culminated in cuts in the world oil price in 1959 and 1960 by the major oil companies that brought five oil-exporting countries together in Baghdad in 1960 to found the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries—OPEC—in order to defend their revenues. Oil remained cheap, convenient, and abundant, and it became the