Daniel Yergin

But I think there was just a, you know, there was far less knowledge about the market where supplies were, there was no sort of coordination.

Now there's much greater knowledge and transparency.

I mean, it was just,

And you had what were called integrated companies, the same company that produced the oil in the Middle East, put it on their tankers and sent it to their refineries in the United States or Europe to their gas stations.

And that system is gone.

When you see the names of the big oil companies on a gas station, if you're not driving an electric car and you pull in, odds are that it's not owned by that company there.

It's a franchise.

Well, so OPEC was setting prices, but then the market responds, demand goes down.

And in fact, that's exactly what OPEC did with its prices.

It created incredible incentive to bring on new supplies and to be more efficient.

And thus it ended up undercutting its own price.

I mean, one of the things I really carried away from the prize is

is there, as you know, there are hundreds of really interesting characters in the book, but the two most important characters, one is named supply and one is named demand.

And that's something that I, you know, keep, you know, you've got to keep in mind with all the other drama that goes on.

Or find more.

lithium yeah whereas at least during the oil crises it really felt like the entire world economy is just on well i think that goes back to you know the centrality of oil as a strategic economy as a strategic commodity you know japan had basically just switched its economy from coal to oil europe was switching from coal to oil and it was just such a high dependence uh

I mean, markets did eventually respond.

I mean, you had a price collapse in 1986, which was the result of that.

I mean, in early 1980s, people were saying, oh, the price of oil is going to go to what in today's dollars would be $200 or $300 a barrel.

It collapsed.