The long-term access to and supply of global energy provisions has been a central political, social, and environmental challenge for several decades. After the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s—which was based on faith in the nearly boundless availability of inexpensive energy resources—the first oil price crisis in October 1973 came as a shock. The Organization of Arab Petrol Exporting Countries (OAPEC) increased oil prices and greatly restricted the supply as a reaction to Western industrial nations’ support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. These governments were immediately forced to re-organize their energy politics, instituting measures to reduce usage, find substitute energy sources, and become more ecologically responsible. The narrative of unlimited energy resourcesbegan to be challenged more and more. On the other hand, global consumer society continued to expand. Accordingly, the history of price fluctuation as well as the dependence on oil and other non-renewable resources is not yet over.
- Graf, Rüdiger. “Between National and Human Security: Energy Security in the United States and Western Europe in the 1970s.” Historical Social Research 35, no. 4 (2010): 329–48.
- Graf, Rüdiger. “Making Use of the ‘Oil Weapon’: Western Industrial Countries and Arab Petropolitics in 1973/74.” Diplomatic History 36, no. 1 (2012): 185–208.
- Marsh, Steve. Anglo-American Relations and Cold War Oil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
- Yergin, Daniel. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.