WW1
Senator Bérenger warned Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau that the country would run out of oil by March 1918 just when the next spring offensive was set to begin. Supplies were so low that France could sustain no more than three days of heavy German attacks, such as those experienced at Verdun, where massive convoys of trucks had been needed to rush reserves to the front and hold off the German assault. On December 15, 1917, Clemenceau urgently appealed to President Wilson that an additional hundred thousand tons of tanker capacity be made immediately available. Declaring that gasoline was “as vital as blood in the coming battles,” he told Wilson that “a failure in the supply of gasoline would cause the immediate paralysis of our armies.” He ominously added that a shortage might even “compel us to a peace unfavorable to the Allies.” Wilson responded quickly, and the necessary tonnage was swiftly made available.
But more than ad hoc solutions were needed. The oil crisis was already forcing the United States and its European Allies into much tighter integration of supply activities. An Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference was established in February 1918 to pool, coordinate, and control all oil supplies and tanker shipping. Its members were the United States, Britain, France, and Italy. … That joint system along with the introduction of convoys as an antidote to the German U-boats solved the Allies’ oil supply problems for the rest of the war. 8
… altogether, the United States was to satisfy 80 percent of the Allies wartime requirement for petroleum
Japan
In 1914, Japan produced 471,436 kilolitres of petroleum from its own oilfields (50% of its domestic demand).
WW2
Hidden History: Oil Won World War II - RYAN LANDRY JULY 26, 2015
The US was a powerhouse with no exaggeration, as it supplied six billion of the total 7 billion of oil consumed by the Allies in World War II.
Albert Speer
“On May 19, 1944, after …..the attack, Hitler received me…..I described the situation……‘The enemy has struck us at one of our weakest points. If they persist at it this time, we will soon no longer have any fuel production worth mentioning’.”
On June 24, 1944 “….the allies staged a new series of attacks which put many fuel plants out of action. On June 22, nine-tenths of the production of airplane fuel was knocked out.”
July 28, 1944 “I implored Hitler……to reserve a significantly larger part of the fighter plane production……to protecting the home hydrogenation plants……”
November 10, 1944. “Meanwhile the army, too, had become virtually immobile because of the fuel shortage.”
Japan
War against the USA, the UK and the Netherlands was declared on 8 December 1941. That year, Japan produced 308,000 kilolitres of crude oil, seven hundred times less than that of the USA’s 220 million; Japan could only satisfy 12 per cent of its oil demand through domestic product
Idemitsu recalled that Japan entered the war for petroleum and lost it due to a lack of petroleum.
Petro islam
Building Petro-Islam on the Ruins of Arab Nationalism by Giles Kepel
Thus, an otherwise fragile Saudi monarchy buttressed its power by projecting its obedient and charitable dimension internationally. …
These states harbored 1.2 million immigrants in 1975, of whom 60.5 percent were Arabs; this increased to 5.15 million by 1985, with 30.1 percent being Arabs and 43 percent (mostly Muslims) coming from the Indian subcontinent. The social and economic impact of these migrations to the Gulf states was enormous. In Pakistan in the single year 1983, the money sent home by Gulf emigrants amounted to $3 billion, compared with a total of $735 million given to the nation in foreign aid. …
Alongside these social changes, inexhaustible funds were now available to promote the dawa, or call to Islam, through Wahhabite preaching. The Muslim World League, founded in 1962 as a counterweight to Nasser’s propaganda, opened new offices in every area of the world where Muslims lived. The league played a pioneering role in supporting Islamic associations, mosques, and investment plans for the future. In addition, the Saudi ministry for religious affairs printed and distributed millions of Korans free of charge, along with Wahhabite doctrinal texts, among the world’s mosques, from the African plains to the rice paddies of Indonesia and the Muslim immigrant high-rise housing projects of European cities. … The Saudis’ push for doctrinal uniformity was accompanied by their liberal distribution of money for building mosques. More than 1,500 were built around the world in the last half century, paid for by Saudi public funds.15 Their proliferation from the mid-1970s onward was one of the most visible changes in the landscape of the rapidly urbanizing Muslim world.
The impact of the OIC on world history has remained slight, largely because of political divisions among its members and nonpayment of dues except by the oil states and Malaysia. Nevertheless, it has served as a forum for identifying causes, such as that of the Palestinians, and giving them an Islamic rather than nationalist slant. … In each of these cases (and in the critical positions adopted toward Iran during the 1980s), the OIC gave an institutional gloss of consensus to the views of Saudi Arabia. In December 1973, when oil prices were at their peak, the OIC made the decision to create the Islamic Development Bank, with headquarters in Jeddah. The bank became operational in 1975 and proceeded to finance development projects in the poorest Muslim countries, mostly using funds from the Gulf nations within the framework of the Islamic banking system.
Japanese caution
a securities firm’s research department gives a clear signal of the concern with a carefully detailed intelligence report on the movement of Middle East oil money throughout the industrialized world. … Arab money is even welcome in stocks, Finance Ministry officials said cautiously, so long as it is for portfolio investment and relatively small.
… The Japanese don’t like foreign investment in general and are particularly anxious that Middle Easterners not acquire enough equity to participate in corporate management.
Basically, the Japanese don’t want foreign investment and never have. When the modernization process began in Japan 100 years ago, the Japanese decided then they would industrialize without foreign assistance and keep foreign influence here to a minimum.
MITI has… opposed expansion of the Japanese automobile industry… The automobile, it has pointed out, requires the two raw materials that are in shortest supply in Japan: petroleum and iron ore.
Reducing demand
In 1973 every maker of home appliances went to work to cut power consumption, and in fact they competed with each other to see who could produce products using the least power.
Cuba
That time Cuba replaced tractors with oxen October 19, 2015 Christopher D. Cook
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuban agriculture collapsed with it. Oil imports fell by 53 percent. …
Cuba gets Venezuelan oil at subsidized prices and pays with medical services and medicines.
Oil shock responses
- More cycling.