What do you think American Empire is all about if not controlling the oil rich countries in middle east, as well as extremely oil rich countries like Venezuela?

The only failing here is that America has decaying, hallowed out industrial base where it can't just cheaply mass produce and replenish hi-end rockets and tech to take care of business-as-usual quickly, because everything down to raw materials is just so expensive.

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vrganj 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Oil itself is becoming irrelevant quickly. It's a play for becoming king of the ashes.

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Johanx64 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Familiarize yourself with this: https://www.worldometers.info/oil/

Top reserves by country, historical data on consumption (including by country).

These basic data points explain US foreign policy better than anything.

There is no data or trends that supports the notion that oil is becoming irrelevant, much less quickly.

US with it's current reserves and oil consumption rate would last roughly 12 years, btw.

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vrganj an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Let me show you this figure in response: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/United-States-Farm-based...

US farm horse population over time. Looked like it was gonna grow endlessly in the 1920s. It didn't because the whole thing became obsolete.

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bakies 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That doesn't mean it won't happen.

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Johanx64 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I mean something undeniably WILL happen as the world has roughly 47 years left at current consumption rate of oil.

Whether what's going to happen will be whatever it is you're imagining is completely different story entirely.

Needless to say, If you have a largely deindustrialized country you can't really make any sort of transition happen yourself anyway, not at the grand scale and speed necessary for this endeavour.

Expect fireworks.

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bakies 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> There is no data or trends that supports the notion that oil is becoming irrelevant

> the world has roughly 47 years left at current consumption rate of oil.

This is contradictory?

	▲	Johanx64 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Lets say, you have 47 years left to live. Does that make those 47 years irrelevant - just because they will end? There's no contradiction there. It just makes these last-remaining fossil fuels even more valuable. Moreover oil use hasn't ramped down, nor is it getting replaced in any substantial way. I suspect people have no slightest clue just how reliant the modern world is on fossil fuels outside of it's use in cars.

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Teever 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I always find this chart really insightful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil#/media/File:US_Whale...

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nathanaldensr 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is simply not true by most objective metrics... unless you don't like plastic and fertilizer?

	▲	OutOfHere 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We produce a lot of biofuel from corn which can in principle be converted and used to make some but not all types of plastics.