Daniel Yergin

General Patton's lunch in 1944 for Germany is held back by oil.

And the U.S.

is going after the oil lines that are supplying the Japanese oil.

attacking them to basically drain the oil out of the Japanese war machine.

And one of the things that was a real eye opener for me, you know, people have heard of the kamikaze pilots who would fly their planes into the aircraft carrier.

One big reason they were doing that was to save fuel so they wouldn't have to fly back.

Yeah, the U.S.

put an embargo on them.

And one of the Japanese admirals said, you know, without the oil, our fleet will become scarecrows.

Well, I think after World War I, it clearly was on the agenda in a way that it hadn't been before.

And you had governments much more engaged in supporting, you know, U.S.

companies.

There was also this vision that the U.S., which, by the way, the U.S.,

was so dominant as a producer.

Remember that six out of seven barrels of oil that were used by the allies during World War II, six out of seven of them came from the United States.

So, but after World War I, you had these fears of running out.

And so that was one reason the US government supported American companies beginning to go into the Middle East because governments recognize you needed oil.

The U.S.

had been this huge supplier.

But after World War II, we had economic growth.