Oil prices, scarcity, and geographies of war

Abstract

Many commentators warn that oil scarcity increases the likelihood of war; we question this simplistic concept of scarcity-driven wars. Questioning the relationship between violence, scarcity, and oil begins from reconsidering the causal relationship between high prices and war: Wars can arise in the context of low prices, and the oil-related dimensions of conflicts that occur in the context of high oil prices cannot be solely reduced to struggles over dwindling resources. Based on a succinct review of recent studies, a discussion of major hypotheses, and a brief case study of Sudan, we suggest that scarcity is in part a narrative constructed for and through prices. Power relations resulting in massive financial windfalls mediate this narrative and its selective geographies of war and peace. We outline several hypotheses, and-drawing on critical geopolitics and political ecology-explore avenues for further studies incorporating spatially disaggregated analyses. © 2009 by Association of American Geographers.