ABSTRACT
Access to the Middle East’s oil is essential to the industrialized societies of the world; therefore, in one way or another, petroleum lies at the heart of the Middle East foreign policy calculations of the United States and other oil-producing and oil-consuming nations. Global-energy analyst Steve Yetiv explains why Middle East oil will necessarily become an even more central concern. Demand for it continues to grow; yet oil is a limited resource, and oil production will eventually peak and then tail off as oil becomes harder to find. As that happens, and as other petroleum reserves dry up, Middle East oil—the largest reserves in the world—will experience increasing demand. Factors that pertain especially or uniquely to the sociopolitical conditions of the Middle East also threaten the region’s flow of oil to the world. For example, at times Iran has resisted international pressure on its nuclear program by threatening to cut off oil to the West. Iran has the military strength to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, through which about 40 percent of the world’s oil exports flow each day. Oil drilling, refining, and shipping are all activities vulnerable to attacks by terrorists as well. Yetiv concludes, however, by outlining a number of factors that help to mitigate such threats to the disruption of the oil supply.
