Making of the Modern World Politics of Global Energy

1. Making of the Modern WorldPolitics of Global Energy Dr. Katayoun Shafiee

2. Defining Features of energy systems • Wood, coal, oil, natural gas, radioactive energy, running water, wind, and solar power • An interconnected network of production, transportation, and consumption that delivers energy resources to people to rely on • New energy systems have taken over the world in a period of 50-60 years

3. Global Energy Shifts, 1800-2000 • Coal provided 10% of the world’s commercial energy in 1800 to over 60% in 1913 • The shift to the reliance on oil was even more rapid. In 1910, oil constituted only 5% of the world’s commercial energy but over 60% by 1970

4. SHIFT TO CARBON-BASED ENERGY • Solar radiation enabled dispersed forms of human settlement • Switch to coal enabled the concentration of populations in cities • Coal catapults Britain, the US, and Germany into a new way of life based in cities and large-scale manufacturing • Coal also had a land releasing factor in terms of the acquisition of colonial territories to grow industrial crops generating demand for European manufacturing

5. FOSSIL FUELS AND POLITICS • Age of empire and the age of democratization coincided as new political forces depended on the concentration of populations in cities and in manufacturing = mass collective life made possible by the flow of unprecedented concentrations of nonrenewable carbon stores • Fossil fuels were connected with mass democracy of 19th and early 20th centuries in the way that most of the world’s industrial regions grew near supplies of coal. • Labour activism due to new kind of political power gained

6. Shift from coal to Oil • The British government first becomes concerned with the exhaustion of coal supplies in the late 19th century • Two solutions: 1) Military and colonial expansion; 2) domestic exploitation of coal workers (e.g. Wales) • Growing popularity of the gasoline-powered combustion engine • British imperial rule can be seen as a byproduct of global energy shift to fossil fuels

8. William Knox D’Arcy • 1901 Oil Concession signed with Iranian government • Extends across Iran, except for 5 northern provinces under Russian control • British financiers held interests in other oil companies such as the Burma Oil Company, Royal Dutch, and the Shell groups • In 1908 D’Arcy’s team of drillers first extracted oil from under the ground in southwest Iran

9. British Admiralty switches from coal to fuel oil • In 1914, the British Parliament approves shareholding deal between the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (AIOC) and the Admiralty providing, “reasonably priced” fuel in exchange for a controlling share in the company’s stock. • Admiralty consumes 65% refinery output in WWI and two-thirds of fuel oil between 1930 and 1937 • Certain properties of oil advantageous to coal

10. Transnational oil Corporation and the Cartel Arrangement • Oil corporation emerges on global scale in this period, tied to history of colonising corporation • Recreate monopoly arrangement by establishing exclusive territories of operation, but using concession and collusive financial deals, rather than imperial edict • Coincides with shift in a form of empire and its method of creating political control • Hydrocarbon patents cartel: blocks conversion of coal to synthetic oil

11. FOSSIL FUELS AND LABOUR • Like coal, oil gives workers new kind of power. • Oil comes out of the ground under its own pressure; it requires a smaller workforce than coal • The layout and design of oil infrastructure results in distinct methods of monitoring and surveillance of workers • The oil workers’ capacity to form unions and strike is drastically reduced as other sources of oil can be relied on and tankers can be rerouted

12. Oil Worker Strikes • Between the 1920s and 1950s, oil workers helped transform the oilfields, pipeline, and refinery of southwest Iran into sites of intense political struggle. • The infrastructure of oil operations was vulnerable but not as easy to incapacitate through strike actions, as were railways that carried coal, for example. • Worker disruption of oil infrastructure had political consequences for the powers of the transnational oil corporation and the national state.

13. 1946 General Strike • Supported by Iranian communist party - oil workers demand increased wages, better housing and working conditions; government responds with martial law • Strike mechanism successful in paralyzing operations: • New labor law passed and AIOC promises to respect its terms, but more AIOC jobs outsourced to small firms • 67,000 employed in British-owned oil industry; largest employer in Iran

14. Oil Nationalization Crisis, 1951 • Post-WWII altered energetics of democracy • Oil and democracy engineered in battles at pipelines and refineries interlinked with labour claims and politics of sovereignty • March 8, 1951, Iran approves nationalization of oil industry • Systems could not be paralyzed in the way that coal workers were able to achieve • 1953 coup and the reengineering of Iran’s national government is a perfect example of how the political possibility of more democratic forms of oil production is closed

15. Nuclear power, 1960s-70s • Politics of ‘Limits to Growth’ • Production of environment as a rival object of politics • Adopting ways of drilling and transporting oil that inadvertently led to giant oil spills around which environmentalists able to organize • Connected risk is that increase in oil prices will make nuclear power affordable • Oil companies could force producers of nuclear power to introduce into the price of the energy they sold a payment to cover its long-term environmental effects

16. Hydro-power • Not all energy systems have rapid and sustained trajectory • Energy from hydroelectric facilities (e.g. dams) also had slow growth in the 20th century. • By 2000, it provided 3% of world’s commercial energy • This does not mean that hydro-power did not have an impact on technology, society, and politics – e.g. Dez Dam in southwest Iran

19. CONCLUSIONS: making sense of the politics of global energy • Old models: Resource determinism • Some key features: geopolitical rivalry, state intervention in industries, entrepreneurs and private corporations, competition and oligopoly, and social conflict • Infrastructure of energy systems shape politics of empire, democracy, and capitalism.