A (subjective) history of oil
- David Moreno
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Our story begins on August 27, 1859. It will shape the entire 20th century and threaten the 21st. We are in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Coal reigns supreme, and old Europe is at the height of its glory. On that day, in Pennsylvania, in the eastern United States, the engineer Edwin Drake uses the drill he designed to crack the rock 21 meters below the surface. When the granite fractures, a black liquid spurts from the earth's core.
Oil © Getty Images
The fever grips the entire country, for it is now known that every acre of land holds potential wealth, a new gold: black gold. An entire trade is taking shape. A new testing ground opens up, with its own rules, where everyone can indulge their dreams, realize their ambitions or not: (more or less) crooked businessmen, adventurous engineers, hardworking and submissive workers, opportunistic whiskey smugglers, desperate prostitutes, and the madams of chaotic brothels.
The American Civil War accelerated this trend: the North rushed to acquire oil to supply the lubricants and solvents essential for its railroads and for arms manufacturing. The goal was to produce without respite: a war had to be waged and, above all, won.
Vast swathes of North American territory are ravaged by this new industry: derricks, oil wells, and heavy machinery quickly invade the landscape. Entire cities spring up only to vanish as soon as the soil dries out. The environment then suffers its first major ecological assault.
Nothing seems to embody the beauty and madness of the American dream better than oil. The black liquid represents extreme freedom coupled with the possibility of wealth. Oil is the brutal marriage of the desire for power and the unpredictable.
In this America open to all, where everything seems possible, there is a young man from Ohio, a graduate in accounting, wiry as a rail, authoritarian, and short (5 feet). His defining characteristic: an insatiable greed. He dreams with his eyes wide open, with a holy horror of anything that resists him. Reality must bend to his demands, nothing more, nothing less. This man will dream of greatness his entire life, never forgetting to act through cunning and violence.
John Davison Rockefeller
Rockefeller immediately distinguished himself: drilling wells seemed far too risky to him. He preferred, initially, to leave the task of extracting the precious liquid to adventurers; he would take care of the rest: organizing, refining, and selling.
In 1870, he founded his own refinery company, Standard Oil of Ohio . Even though the firm quickly became the largest in the world, John Davidson Rockefeller now believed that remaining confined to refining was for small players. He wanted to expand, to control the entire chain: from crude oil extraction to the sale of kerosene, including transportation, refining, and storage, not forgetting marketing to maximize sales. There wasn't a single area of the oil industry he didn't want to exploit.
Insatiable as ever, Standard Oil (the original company was forced to change its name) soon absorbed all the other refineries in the country. Rockefeller built, dismantled, crushed competitors, lowered prices, raised them again, and dictated his own law. Infinitely cunning and immensely greedy, he embodied the inventor of modern capitalism, where the important thing was to grow, grow, grow… in a brutal, ruthless, and amoral way. The captain of industry perfectly sealed the betrothal of capital and oil; the union would be explosive and deadly.
On April 20, 1914, tensions were running high in Ludlow, Colorado. Several thousand miners at the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company had been on strike for months. Yet their demands were modest: an eight-hour workday, a decent wage, a modicum of dignity. Nothing worked; management refused to budge. In fact, the opposite occurred: this deadlock had become unbearable, and they now felt they deserved reprisals. These reprisals would be devastating.
A militia, composed in part of Rockefeller's henchmen, attacked the miners' camp and their families with machine guns. Cornered, the miners returned fire. After a day of skirmishes, the camp was completely burned down. Twenty-six people were killed: thirteen miners, eleven children, and two women. This became known as the Ludlow Massacre.
Funeral procession of the victims of the Ludlow massacre
Oil, meanwhile, is thriving. Especially since its most perfect justification imaginable has arrived: the invention that will propel humanity into modernity, the automobile. History has these marvelous encounters that abolish the belief in chance and make us believe that oil has a destiny here.
Calouste Gulbenkian : Mr. 5%
Early 20th century. One region was quickly seen as the new El Dorado: the Persian Gulf, which held nearly 40% of the world's oil reserves. Needless to say, the major powers (England, the United States, France, and Germany) vied for this treasure. The end of the First World War deprived the Germans of a significant share of the pie. This period saw the rise of major companies: Shell , Mobil , Esso , BP , and others, not forgetting the Compagnie Française des Pétroles (French Petroleum Company ), founded in 1924, the forerunner of TotalEnergies .
This golden gulf is the object of everyone's desire. Treachery, intrigue, conquest, and protectorates follow one another; all means are justified to seize it. It is in this context of intrigue that our man, Calouste Gulbenkian, enters the scene.
Ostend, Belgium, July 31, 1928. This Armenian man, with his singular charm, managed to bring together the British, French, and Americans at the Royal Palace Hotel. Calouste Gulbenkian extracted a historic agreement from them: the Middle East divided into three equal parts, 23.75% each, with each retaining 5% for himself (earning him the nickname " Mr. Five Percent "). With a stroke of red pencil, he delineated a vast territory encompassing part of the former Ottoman Empire. The powers accepted the rule he proposed: none could exploit an oil field alone without offering a share to the others.
Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian
This unexpected agreement made Calouste Gulbenkian one of the richest men in the world and revealed him for who he truly was: a peerless strategist, endowed with infinite patience and formidable precision. His influence was such that he would play a role in some of the important decisions of the Second World War. In particular, he would encourage Franco to navigate between Hitler and the Allies. But for now, in the late 1920s, Mr. 5% was enjoying his immense fortune in his own way: he resided year-round in a suite at the Ritz and spent lavishly on Old Master paintings, sumptuous banquets, and a constant parade of very young lovers (fourteen years old on average).
The relentless reign of black gold
1945. On the deck of an American cruiser, Franklin D. Roosevelt meets Ibn Saud, the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. From this meeting, a pact is born: Washington guarantees Saudi Arabia military protection in exchange for continued access to its oil. No one is truly interested in this land scorched by the sun and ravaged by poverty. But everything changes when American engineers discover oil near Khobar. In an instant, the desert becomes a land of opportunity.
Ibn Saud lived the rest of his days in relative austerity. Upon his death, however, he left behind a considerable number of descendants: more than 80 sons and daughters from some 30 wives, who didn't hesitate to exploit the rivers of crude oil flowing abundantly beneath the Saudi subsoil. Empires were built, palaces constructed. All this cash in abundance quickly became frightening.
The United States, for its part, overthrew the Shah of Iran, supported the rise to power of the Indonesian dictator Suharto, extended its influence in the Middle East, and then invaded Kuwait and Iraq. Everywhere, they advanced with the same obsession: to dig the earth. When you wage war, it's because a well is never far away.
Because we always need more crude oil. Everything in front of us was born from oil: cities, cars, planes, industries, services, the military, luxury, and necessity. We need more. We consume 97 million barrels a day worldwide. 179,000 liters per second. Even more. It's so good. We know it's killing us, but what can you do? Going back to the Stone Age?
We can't, we don't know how to stop. We continue to deplete the soil, destroy the environment, and accelerate global warming. We must believe that the modern world comes at this price, and that nothing serious will be done to change the trend. .
This text is the result of an automated translation. The first version of this text (in French) is available at the following address:
Sources :
Pierre Ducrozet, Le Grand Vertige, roman, éd. Actes Sud, 366 pages
John Davidson Rockefeller – Wikipedia
Calouste Gulbenkian – Wikipedia
