Two women from the Iranian Red Crescent Society stand as a thick plume of smoke from a U.S.-Israeli strike on an oil storage facility rises into the sky in Tehran.Vahid Salemi/The Associated Press
Don Gillmor’s book, On Oil, is a finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.
U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken of American oil “dominance” at length, though hasn’t been able to articulate what that actually means. But now the “little excursion” in Iran has given us a grim vision of what oil dominance can look like. It speaks to the complexity and perversity of oil that a tenuous theocracy can hold the world hostage by threatening a single narrow waterway. Though when it comes to oil we have always been hostages – with most of us succumbing to the Stockholm Syndrome, and bonding with our captors.
Mr. Trump has often trumpeted the fact that the U.S. is now the world’s largest oil producer. Despite that, America has yet to achieve energy independence, let alone dominance. It still imports 8.51 million barrels a day from dozens of countries (half of it from Canada). And the U.S. has no influence on the price of oil, which is why the residents of Bakersfield, Calif., a city surrounded by hundreds of pump jacks, were paying US$6.35 for a gallon of premium gasoline last week.
Oil has always been a large part of Mr. Trump’s political ethos. Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, he views it as a geopolitical weapon. He took control of Venezuela’s oil, and has talked about taking Iran’s oil. “If it were up to me, I’d take the oil,” he said on Monday. “I’d keep the oil. It would bring plenty of money.”
Before this week’s ceasefire was announced, watching the apocalyptic images coming out of Iran – black smoke billowing out of tankers and oil depots as Israel and the U.S. bombed Iran, and Iran targeted the energy infrastructure of its neighbours – felt like we were witnessing the violent twilight of oil. It is cumbersome, polluting and alarmingly vulnerable, the fuel of the past.
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Though the past is MAGA’s preferred tense, a time when America was great – open roads, freedom, stability and the hegemony of the white male. Oil was a critical part of that, but now we are slouching toward 1973.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has repeatedly presented America's war in Iran in religious terms during press conferences.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
When the price of oil spiked that year, it was due to a Holy War in the Middle East. And now, apparently, we have a Holier War. This week, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth compared the Easter rescue of a downed U.S. airman to the resurrection of Christ. “God is good,” he said. Earlier in the war, Mr. Hegseth, a student of the Crusades, asked all Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
It should come as no surprise that oil and religion are colliding in Iran; the two have a long, shared history in both North America and the Middle East. John D. Rockefeller, the former head of Standard Oil, was a devout Baptist who saw oil and gas as “the bountiful gifts of the great Creator.”
Pattillo Higgins, one of the first wildcatters to hit oil in Texas in 1901, carried a Bible and claimed to be in touch with the Divine. As historian Darren Dochuk outlined in his book, Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America, Higgins used his oil money to build “a spiritual kingdom in anticipation of the Christ’s return.” There remains a politically powerful streak of evangelism running through Texas oil.
In 1967, two evangelicals – John Howard Pew, president of Sun Oil, and Alberta premier Ernest Manning – oversaw the baptism of Alberta’s oil sands. Both men saw the oil sands as a gift from God and a form of Christian freedom.
Iran sees oil as God-given as well, and also equates it with freedom, though in their case, freedom from colonialism. Iran nationalized its oil industry in 1951, and in 1979 clerics took control, viewing it as a step toward freedom from colonial domination.
The Crusades (1095-1291) were partly about whose god was the true God. But now oil is the dominant global religion – a belief system that binds us all. It has given us hope, mobility, comfort and damnation. Only an anointed few ever actually see it. A war that has been about regime change, missiles, uranium, and, most recently, religion, has, like other wars before it, come down to oil.
Solar panels cover mountainsides in Xinxi village. China leads the world in the manufacturing and installing of solar capacity as it attempts to find alternative sources of energy.-/AFP/Getty Images
Predictions of the effects of the Iran War vary widely. The world is less exposed to oil shocks than it was in 1973. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe dramatically increased its adoption of renewables (in 2023, the EU installed a record 56 gigawatts of solar capacity, a 60-per-cent increase from 2021). China leads the world in the manufacture and installation of solar and wind capacity. Both the EU and China are much more insulated from oil shocks than they were even four years ago.
On the other hand, the disruption is much greater this time around, and the effects could still be catastrophic, depending on how the ceasefire plays out. Even in the best-case scenario, it will take months for production to reach prewar levels.
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Canada is better positioned than most to weather these oil blips. The west has vast reserves, and Canada has one of the cleanest electricity grids in the world. But no one is immune to the economic shocks, and as always, the poorest countries will suffer the most.
The war in Iran has showcased, once more, how pervasive oil is – the complex links between producers, refiners, shippers, consumers and countries, and the way it ripples through so much of the global economy. But it no longer represents freedom, but rather, its opposite.
The only real defence against the next oil war, in whatever form it takes, is alternative forms of energy. The world is moving in that direction, and will certainly increase its adoption rate in the wake of Iran. Yet America continues to move in the opposite direction, at least as far as government policy is concerned. The U.S. could end up looking like a larger version of Havana, with aging gas-powered trucks lumbering through the streets while the rest of the world is in EVs. (In Norway, the global leader, 98 per cent of new cars sold in December were EVs.)
The Trump administration’s subsidies to the oil and gas industry (US$35-billion annually), the rollback of environmental laws and the opening of public lands to “drill, baby, drill” provide short-term gains for the fossil fuel industry, but increasingly hamstring America’s energy future.
Mr. Trump is happiest in the short term, sometimes changing positions within a single sentence. His emphasis on short-term results (or the illusion of short-term results) will leave both his party and his country, and to a degree, the world, a poorer place. We underestimate Mr. Trump’s narcissism at our peril. He may feel that the world should go when he goes.
The flue-gas stacks of Mill Creek Generating Station in the Valley Village neighborhood of Louisville, Ky. While many countries are moving towards renewable energy, the Trump administration announced last year it will invest millions in coal production and opened 13 million acres of public land to coal mining.Jon Cherry/Getty Images
In 2024, Britain shuttered its last coal plant, more than two centuries after coal began powering the Industrial Revolution. It was the first country to industrialize, becoming a leader in manufacturing, trade and financial services, and it quickly became the most powerful country on Earth. Pax Britannica lasted roughly a century. In 2025, the Trump administration announced a US$625-million investment to boost coal production and opened 13 million acres of public land to coal mining, the President’s nostalgic largesse bypassing the 20th century and going back into the 19th, the century he most embodies.
For decades, America represented the future for much of the world: ambitious, shiny, sexy and rich. The end of Pax Americana will likely be tied to energy. It’s too late for the U.S. to catch the Chinese as far as renewable energy goes, and Mr. Trump would prefer to win the oil battle, even if it means losing the energy war.
His reign has been an exercise in chaos theory: A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and a tornado arrives in Tennessee. A mad king flaps his gums in Washington and a typhoon is unleashed in Tehran, spreading oil misery across the globe.