Washington’s control over the movements of ~90% of global crude oil exports is like a non-lethal weapon of mass destruction in US arsenal. National security fears in China over importing US controlled oil are behind Beijing’s drive to electrify its transportation fleet. Russia’s war on Ukraine in February 2022, is behind Europe’s drive to electrify its transportation fleet. The US/Israel war against Iran in February 2026 and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz must have awakened the rest of the oil importing world to the national security risks of crude oil imports.
The transport sector uses around two-thirds of global demand for crude oil. It may be guesstimated that by 2050, most, if not all, new cars sold in oil importing countries will be electric. By that time, more than 50% of global oil exports would disappear, most of which would be from the Middle East. The strategic military and economic repercussions of this shift will be enormous.
In what follows, I will demonstrate how US’ leadership in environmental protection laws between 1955 and 2016, was turned on its head by Donald Trump. I will outline how major oil companies and exporting countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, perpetrate environmental vandalism. I will argue that at the centre of US strategy to use global crude oil exports as a non-lethal weapon of mass destruction is control over Saudi oil. To this end, the US stations ~40,000 soldiers in naval and air force bases in GCC states to protect the oilfields and royal palaces. I will contend that national security fears in China and Europe, not love of the environment and clean air, are behind the transition from the combustion engine to the EV. I will contemplate the likely consequences of the forthcoming collapse in crude oil exports on the political and economic landscapes in GCC states and the wider Middle East.
Wilful delinquency
Politicians, investors, lenders, and executives in oil, gas, coal, car-making, fossil fuel power plants, and oil exporting countries, have been using all the tactics previously mastered by the tobacco industry to discredit climate science and the 97% of actively-publishing climate scientists who attribute greenhouse gas emissions and global heating to human activity. Despite mounting evidence from intense heat waves, melting glaciers, droughts, longer wildfire seasons, and bigger, stronger hurricanes, climate change deniers brush aside the evidence as normal variations in weather pattern. There are those who accept that global heating is real but deny human responsibility. There are others who claim that global heating is beneficial because it will make parts of the earth more habitable, oblivious to the losses that will be suffered by the insurance, mortgage, and municipal bond markets from the parts of the earth that will become uninhabitable. The annual losses due to, for example, heat-induced labour productivity alone may reach over two trillion dollars. Then, there is Donald Trump who claims without evidence that climate change was a Chinese hoax, accusing climate change scientists of having a political agenda, doubting whether humans were responsible for earth’s rising temperatures, and predicting that those temperatures could very well go back.
America’s leadership in environmental protection laws between 1955 and 2016
The first US federal legislation involving air pollution was The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. It provided funds for federal research in air pollution.
It was followed by The Clean Air Act of 1963, the first federal legislation regarding air pollution control. It established a federal program within the US Public Health Service and authorized research into techniques for monitoring and controlling air pollution.
Alarm bells were sounded in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson released for publication a 317-page report of the Environmental Pollution Panel of the President’s Science Advisory Committee titled Restoring the Quality of Our Environment. The Report warned that large-scale fossil fuel burning is increasing CO2 in the atmosphere well beyond normal levels. The result will likely be major changes to the earth’s climate.
In 1967, the Air Quality Act initiated enforcement proceedings in areas subject to interstate air pollution transport.
On December 2, 1970, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created. At approximately the same time, the enactment of The Clean Air Act of 1970 authorized the development of comprehensive federal and state regulations to limit emissions from both stationary (industrial) sources and mobile sources. The 1970 Act was amended in 1977 and 1990.
Perpetrating environmental vandalism
In 1968, scientists with the Stanford Research Institute warned the American Petroleum Institute of potentially serious climate risks arising from increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew of climate change long before it became a public issue. In July 1977, Exxon’s Research confirmed the role fossil fuels play in global heating. Its top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect. Nonetheless, they spent millions of dollars to promote climate denial.
In Europe, topping the list of firms obstructing climate action is British Petroleum, notwithstanding the green logo it designed in 2000 to propagate a positive environmental image of itself. In 2019, the Guardian Newspaper revealed that BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Total spend US$200 million a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to address environmental damage. They have been lobbying politicians to delay, water down, and even repeal sensible environmental laws, while propagating an image of themselves as being green and committed to renewable energy.
Saudi Arabia has been the chief defender of crude oil in international climate policy making forums. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations Climate Talks, and the Paris Agreement of 2015, Riyadh has been on a crusade disputing the science, undermining the 1.5 Centigrade target, and diluting fossil fuel phase out. Saudi Arabia’s economic weaknesses are behind its strong opposition to any effort to end the use of the internal combustion engine. It suffers from a poorly diversified economy, big population growth, and a sizable expatriate community that provides 70% of the workforce. In 2022, the IMF wrote: Oil revenues averaged 75% of total budget revenues since 2010, with large variations, peaking at 93% in 2011 and falling to 53% in 2020.
Gaslighting the public and lobbying against laws to clean the environment succeeded in increasing global crude oil extraction from 10 million barrels per day (MBD) to 79 MBD in 2025, of which ~40 MBD are exported. The transport sector burns most crude oil products. In 2022, transportation in the US accounted for ~67% of oil use. In Europe, almost two thirds of oil is used in transport. In China, the ratio is ~48%, thanks to its rapid reliance on the EV.
Donald Trump’s assault on environmental regulations
Donald Trump is the denier-in-chief of climate heating. He asserted on Twitter four years before reaching the White House that The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
During his first term in office (January 2020, 2017- January 20, 2021), Trump rolled back more than 125 environmental rules. He left the burden of cleaning the mess to future generations, but improved corporate profits and stock values of polluting companies. He ramped up sales of oil and gas leases on federal land. On August 4, 2017, the Administration notified its intent to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, leaving the US the only country in the world outside the landmark Paris Agreement. At the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland in December 2018, the United States joined Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Russia in objecting to the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5 centigrade.
During the first eighteen months of his second term in office, Trump took at least 500 actions that directly threaten the environment, climate, and human health. On the first day, January 20, 2025, he withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, for the second time. On the same day, he declared a national energy emergency to boost oil drilling and speed up pipeline construction. On June 5, 2026, Trump invoked the President’s wartime powers to invest $700 million to revive the US coal industry.
What might be lurking behind Trump’s assault on the environment?
It might be a strategy to:
– Prolong the life of America’s oil weapon.
– Prolong the life of the US Dollar as the world’s major reserve currency.
– Prolong the use of America’s fossil fuels and smoke-stack industries to avoid the cost of investing in greening the American economy.
In his actions, Donald Trump removed the United States from leading the Second Industrial Revolution, leaving the field to China.
The bright side
Environmentalists’ struggle finally benefited from two unexpected developments. The first was Russia’s war against the Ukraine in February 2022. It awakened European politicians, Germany in particular, to the national security risks of relying on Russia’s oil and gas. It prompted the European Union to require 90% of new cars sold from 2035 to be zero-emission, and the United Kingdom, 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans to be zero emission by 2030, increasing to 100% by 2035.
The second development was the US/Israel war against Iran in February 2026 and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It awakened the entire world to the national security risks of crude oil imports.
Crude oil exports as a non-lethal weapon of mass destruction
Crude oil hegemony in a world addicted to crude oil is world hegemony, a non-lethal weapon of mass destruction in the arsenal of the United States against oil importing rivals. A 24-page report in 1981 prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency for former President Ronald Reagan titled USSR-Western Europe: Implications of the Siberia-to-Europe Gas Pipeline advised of the serious political and military risks involved in the construction of a giant gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Describing this document, The New York Times wrote: The language in the C.I.A. memo was unequivocal: The 3,500-mile gas pipeline from Siberia to Germany is a direct threat to the future of Western Europe. Mr. Trump, stressed during a visit to NATO Headquarters in Brussels on July 11, 2018, that a gas pipeline, supposedly the undersea Nord Stream 2 pipeline, from Russia to Germany has made Germany totally controlled by and captive to Russia.
The importance of Saudi and GCC crude oil to Washington
Except for Russia’s crude oil exports of ~4 MBD (out of global exports of ~40 MBD), Washington controls the movement of 90% of global crude oil exports through alliances with oil exporting countries, military basis, and aircraft carriers.
Control over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and the rest of its GCC sisters is the cornerstone of America’s oil hegemony. In 2024, the GCC had ~33% of the world’s reserves, ~22% of global crude oil production, and ~27% of global crude oil exports. These oilfields are the world’s least costly to operate. Sparsely populated by natives tribesmen on a narrow strip of some 800 miles along the Eastern Coast of the Arabian Peninsula, the oilfields are rather easy for US forces to protect.
American interest in crude oil has protected Saudi and GCC rulers for decades despite their autocratic, non-representative, non-participatory, and non-transparent governance. It is simpler for Washington to manage a few absolute rulers than contend with the scores of parliamentarians, political parties, free press, environmental groups, or egalitarian non-governmental organizations. To prevent democratic wind from blowing towards the oil fields, the US ensures that Arab dictatorships in the Levant and Egypt are alive and well.
Washington forgave the al-Sauds twice during the past fifty years for injuries to America. The first was the October 1973 oil boycott. The second was the terrorists’ attacks on September 11, 2001. Although fifteen of the nineteen terrorists were Saudis, G.W. Bush demolished Iraq instead, on false charges. Why? Perhaps because an attack on Saudi Arabia could have been too disruptive to global oil flows, or the White House was salivating over Southern Iraq’s gigantic untapped oil reserves, or Iraq was going to be used as a launch pad to overthrow the Tehran Ayatollahs and impose a regional pax-Americana. In the event, however, beyond crippling Iraq, G. W. Bush, wittingly or unwittingly, managed to hand Iraq to Iran.
Guarding the oilfields, shipping lanes, and royal palaces
The United States stations around 40,000 troops in GCC states to protect the oil fields, shipping lanes, and royal palaces. Bahrain is home to the US Fifth Fleet, hosting ~7,000 personnel. Its Khalifa bin Salman deep-water port can accommodate aircraft carriers. Out of Sheikh Isa Air Base, the US Air Force operates fighter and surveillance aircrafts. In Kuwait, ~13,500 US forces are mainly at Camp Arifjan and Ali al-Salem Air Base. Since 2004, Kuwait has been designated as a Major Non-NATO ally. In Saudi Arabia, US troops number around 2,700, after the large presence at the Prince Sultan air base outside Riyadh was relocated in 2003 to the nearby al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The move was to “purify” the land of the two Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina from the military presence of “infidels”. In Qatar, al-Udeid Air Base is a few minutes flying time from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province where all Saudi oil fields are located. With around 10,000 US troops and 120 aircrafts, al-Udeid is the largest US base in the Middle East. It is indispensable to supporting US military operations throughout the region. The UAE hosts the Gulf Air Warfare Centre at al- Dhafra Air Base, where approximately 3,500 US personnel are based. UAE ports also provide critical logistical support for the US Navy.
GCC’s need for US protection
Oil rich, but very weak, GCC’s Sunni kings, Emirs, and Sultans need US protection from their powerful archenemy neighbour, Shi’ite Iran. In return for US protection, these men implement Washington’s oil politics, purchase American weapons by the trillion, and deposit their monetary surpluses in US Treasury bills and bonds. The ruling elites, also, cultivate private connections with former senior US officials, think tank operatives, captains of industry, media moguls, and lobbyists, who act as advisers, consultants, business partners, investors, lawyers, and banker for hefty “professional fees.” For example, six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, secured a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund on orders from Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman, over the heads of the Funds’ financial advisers. The Emir of Qatar gifted in 2025, a $400 million luxury jet to serve as Air Force One.
Did the bargain provide Saudi Arabia with security? Not according to Donald Trump. He told a rally in Wisconsin on April 29, 2019: We are losing our ass defending you, Saudi Arabia. Also, at a rally in Southaven, Mississippi on October 2, 2018, Trump disclosed that he told King Salman: King — we’re protecting you — you might not be there for two weeks without us. Even South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham had a few words of his own. He announced in December 2018 that the Saudi army can’t fight out of a paper bag and if it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week.
The real test, however, came during the US/Israel war against Iran of February 28, 2026. The thousands of rockets and drones fired from Iran at US bases in GCC and local targets caused enormous damage. Saudi Arabia and its GCC sisters were bombarded without protection from US forces or retaliation from their own trillion-dollar armies and air forces against Iran, save for diplomatic protests. Speaking at a Saudi-backed investment conference in Florida on March 29, 2026, Trump even mocked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: He didn’t think this was going to happen … He didn’t think he’d be kissing my ass.
This egregious vulgarity towards an Arab, let alone an Arab prince, is mind-numbing.
Transitioning to the electric vehicle
The green revolution would evolve in two Stages. The first would replace the internal combustion engine by the EV by around 2050. The second would end the demand for natural gas and coal by around 2090. This article addresses the former, the vanishing curse of crude oil.
The EV made the expected life of crude oil a function of demand, not underground reserves. It will determine how much of the earth’s crude oil reserves will forever be left in the ground.
As argued above, national security fears are behind the recent rapid drive towards the EV. At the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, UK in late 2021, more than 100 stakeholders including governments, automakers, investors, financial institutions and fleet owners and operators committed to accelerate the transition to 100% zero-emission cars and vans globally by 2040, and by no later than 2035 in leading markets. The International Energy Agency (iea), estimated that in 2025, one in four new cars sold worldwide was electric, exceeding 20 million units sold, growing by 20% from 2024. By comparison, in 2018, global EV sales were a mere 2% of worldwide car sales.
China and Europe have been the biggest blocs leading the electrification of the world’s transportation fleets.
China’s quest for independence from crude oil imports
Until 1993, China’s domestic crude oil production (2.9 MBD) was sufficient to meet the country’s industrial needs and its rather small transportation fleet. 1993 was the inflection point–China imported for the first time a negligible volume of crude oil (81,000 barrels/day). Post-1993, the trickle became a flood—2015; ~7 MBD, 2020; ~9 MBD, 2025; ~11.6 MBD. Most of the increase was associated with the growth of China’s fleet of motor vehicle, from 5.5 million civilian owned cars and trucks in 1990, to 469 million at the end of 2025. In 2009, when crude oil imports were 4.3 MBD, to reduce reliance on US controlled oil imports, Beijing began to provide generous subsidies for EV purchases and embarked upon building an industrial scale charging networks .
In 2025, China was by far the world’s biggest market for EV production and sales. It produced more than 70% of the world’s electric vehicles. Sales exceeded 50% of new cars for the first time, representing two-thirds of global EV sales. By 2035, the sale of new petrol cars will be banned.
China’s crude oil consumption in 2024 was ~16 MBD, of which ~5 MBD were produced domestically, leaving 11 MBD to be imported. As the proportion of China’s EV fleet grows relative to the country’s overall number of cars, crude oil imports will diminish, ultimately saving ~48% of China’s overall oil consumption burned in cars, or ~8 MBD, in addition to saving from air, water, and rail transport.
Europe’s quest for independence from crude oil imports
Europe imported 435 million tons, or ~9 MBD of crude oil in 2025. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU legislated that 90% of new cars sold from 2035 to be zero-emission. In the UK, 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans sold will be zero emission by 2030, increasing to 100% by 2035. Ultimately, much of Europe’s crude oil consumption will be eliminated as the proportion of Europe’s EV fleet grows relative to its overall number of cars.
Beyond China and Europe
It may be guesstimated that by 2050, most new cars sold in oil importing countries will be electric and by that time more than 50% of the current ~40 MBD in global crude oil exports would disappear. Ultimately, it may also be guesstimated that somewhere in the region of, say, ~15 MBD of global crude oil exports will be left for non-transport uses, like industrial, pesticides, fertilizers, plastics, chemicals in countries with insufficient domestic oil resources, like China, plus non-oil producing industrialized countries, like Japan, India, and South Korea.
Clamoring for revenues out of a small pie, the market price for crude oil would collapse. Countries with the lowest production costs will try to drive higher cost producers out of the market. However, the crude oil exporters with the bigger military forces, US and Russia, will prevail over the weaker producers.
The consequences of a collapse in crude oil exports
– GCC budgets will suffer. Expatriates will leave. Desertification will follow.
– Russia will lose a major source of US Dollar revenues.
– Washington will lose the oil weapon.
– The US Dollar’s status as a reserve currency will be tarnished, since international oil trades, ~$1.25 trillion annually, are settled using the greenback.
– CO2 and other greenhouse gases will be cut.
The post-oil transformation of the Middle East
Over the millennia, around a million tribesmen lived in impoverished mud-brick villages in the sun-baked shores of the Eastern Arabian Peninsula. Scant rainfall and absence of rivers prevented the development of sizeable settled agricultural communities. The oil century, ~1950-2050, however, transformed the region into a world of glitzy skyscrapers, golf courses, and indoor skating rinks inhabited by around 10 million nationals plus 25 million expatriates sustained through food imports and desalinated sea water.
The post-oil transformation of the GCC and the wider Middle East will be painful with profound political and economic consequences.
The political scene
Without crude oil exports, Washington would abandon the Arabian Peninsula. In a post-oil Middle East, there could be four ethnic and sectarian powers vying for regional control: A powerful Sunni Turkey, a not so powerful Sunni Arab states, a powerful Shi’ite Iran, and a powerful Israel. There may be as many scenarios of the shifting political alliances among these blocks as the mind may conjure. Aiding the myriad configurations, are today’s festering disputes. For example, the Arab population of the Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran want independence from Tehran. Iraq regards Kuwait its own 19th Province. Iran wants Bahrain. The Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey dream of their own state. Israel fantasizes over a Biblical Title Deed from the Nile to the Euphrates.
The Economic scene
The transformation from economies dependent on crude oil revenues to non-oil-based economies would deprive GCC’s government budgets of 75% of revenues. The immediate effect will be felt in the labour markets. While expatriate workers in Saudi Arabia are around 40% of the population, they provide around 70% of the labour force. In the rest of the GCC, expatriate workers are ~80% of the population and provide ~95% of the labour force. Most of the expatriate workers who built and maintain the skyscrapers, hospitals, schools, airports, ports, highways, byways, telecommunication networks, golf courses, etc… will return home. As the foreign workers depart, they will leave behind ghost-towns with excess capacity airports, desalination plants, roads, schools, and public utility networks. Without sufficient skilled workers, the infrastructure would deteriorate quickly in the blazing sun of the Desert. With millions of empty dwellings and office buildings, real estate values would collapse.
After the foreign workers will have departed, there will still be millions of nationals. The rich could afford to move to London and Paris. The rest would likely migrate north, to the Levant, repeating what the Bedouin of Arabia have done since the beginning of time. Ultimately, the oil century will give way to a desertification century, restoring the desert to its former pristine condition.
An observation
The excesses of Gulf Cooperation Council’s rulers during the oil century may be described by the fate of one man: “Ozymandias”—the title of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem (1792-1822) about the King of Kings, the mighty pharaoh Ramesses II, whose huge statue and all of his other works are toppled by the sands of time.