Rabah Arezki , Frederick van der Ploeg, Michael L. Ross
Shock waves from the war Israel and the United States launched against Iran at the end of February have sent oil prices skyrocketing—from $64 a barrel a year ago to $106 a barrel now. This episode joins a long list of embargoes, oil-price shocks, nationalization waves, and resource wars that have made petroleum the textbook case of commodity-driven instability. Yet the kinds of economic and geopolitical volatility that defined the oil age may well look minor compared with the turbulence the critical minerals era is poised to unleash.
Starting in the late nineteenth century, as the world industrialized and the internal combustion engine displaced coal and steam, access to petroleum became inseparable from national power. The emergence of critical minerals—cobalt, lithium, nickel, rare earths, and a dozen others essential to the energy transition, digital infrastructure, and advanced military systems—already bears some parallels to this history.
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