lt in a return of $15,000 (Yergin, 2009). By the twentieth century, the oil industry had become not just the nation's but also the world's biggest business and the first truly globalized modern industry.
World War I was in so far a significant event, as that it transformed oil into a good of strategic importance. Great Britain had switched its fleet from coal to oil as the major source of energy and accordingly access to oil and continuous supply of oil gained strategic importance (Yergin, 2009). Yergin also emphasizes the fact that U.S. economic and military power since WWII has greatly depended on oil imports.
This dependency has had its pitfalls, as various military conflicts and turbulences in international politics such as the Korean War or the Six Day War of 1967, have reminded the United States of the political and economic importance of access to oil.
Yergin's core argument that economic and political power in the twentieth century is inseparably linked to access to oil is convincing. However, one has to acknowledge that he fails to discuss exceptions to this rule. Not just that countries like Germany or Japan, which lacked direct access to oil were economically and politically successful, other countries like Russia, which have a significant wealth in oil reserves have failed to become economically successful. Taking this into account, it is fair to say that Yergin's analysis falls short on discussing the complex relationship between the oil industry, government, and political ideology that in the case of the United States was responsible for America's rise to a political and economic world power.
Yergin does however mention that important figures of the Oil industry such as John D. Rockefeller were able to establish their industrial empires because they were able to successfully lobby the legislature (Yergin, 2009). However, he does fail to address the underlying political, economic,...