Today, those in Congress are hearing the outrage of Americans across the nation about the profits of oil companies and rising gas prices. But the next president, along with Congress, will have a new set of Global challenges: Preventing Civil wars over oil.
Today, oil-producing states make up a growing fraction of the world’s conflict-ridden countries. They now host about a third of the world’s civil wars, both large and small, up from one-fifth in 1992. The number of oil-producer-based conflicts is likely to grow in the future as stratospheric prices of crude oil push more countries in the developing world to produce oil and gas.