What if Saudi Arabia had remained a land of warring tribes, putting off the discovery of their oil fields? Lets move that discovery around a few decades. How about moving the first discovery from 1938 to 1958? No Saudi oil until twenty years after it became available historically. How does that change the world? Presumably oil prices are higher and other source s of oil get exploited earlier. Do the Saudis remain desert tribesmen with a state structure sort of like Yemen until oil is discovered? How does the later discovery affect the structure of the kingdom? How does it affect the structure of the Middle East? Does it change the Palestinian issues? The oil-rich states of the gulf did support the Palestinians in various ways. Presumably later Saudi oil would reduce that support. What would the consequences be?

What if Saudi oil was discovered earlier? The first Saudi discovery could have been pushed forward three or four years if the oil exploration had gone a little better. That would have put initial discover in 1934 or 1935, with shipments starting in the mid-1930s. That would have been just in time for the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the attempted League of Nations oil embargo. With an increased supply of oil, the embargo would have probably been even less successful than it was historically. Prices of oil would have been lower in the mid-to-late 1930s.

That would have probably strengthened the oil-poor Axis countries, and to some extent France, while weakening the US, British and Soviet economies, especially the Soviet one, because of it’s limited range of exports. How does that affect the lead up to World War II? A somewhat stronger Italy, a somewhat more balanced German rearmament, and a weaker Soviet Union with less hard currency to industrialize?

Libyan oil discovered in the mid-1930s? That would probably lead to a stronger Italy, but the improvement would be limited by the nature of Italian Fascism. Mussolini was a truly awful military leader who frittered away the limited power Italy had with operations that had no strategic relevance to Italy. From the time Italy entered the war it never concentrated what little power it had on any one objective. In the summer of 1940 it sent warplanes to fight in the Battle of Britain and built up for an autumn invasion of Yugoslavia that was eventually vetoed by the Germans. The Yugoslavian adventure was eventually replaced by the poorly timed and inadequately prepared invasion of Greece, which ended with Italian troops tied down in the Balkans until Italy left the war. To add to the dispersion of power, the Italians sent troops to fight the Soviet Union, where they were totally outclassed, and even invaded Corsica in late 1942.

A better Italian economy would have supported a stronger Italian military. That military would have been frittered away the same way the real one was. On the other hand, Italy would have probably focused more on protecting their Libyan oil supply, which might have helped focus them a bit. The Italians would have been less of a drain on the German oil supply. The bulk of the Italian surface fleet probably wouldn’t have spent the last half of the Italian participation in the war sitting in harbor because they didn’t have enough oil to go out and fight.

Algerian oil discovered in the mid-1930s? That has some more interesting consequences. More French settlers would have probably gone to Algeria to work in the oil fields. More French troops would have been stationed there to protect the oil fields. If France fell on schedule, the Algerian oil fields would have been a tempting target for the Axis. The British would undoubtedly had problems with Algerian oil being shipped to the Axis. They would have probably tried to limit shipments to Vichy France too, because of the risk of transshipment to the Axis. Interesting can of worms.

Alaskan oil discovered later? Delay North Slope production by a decade or so. What happens? Given the ecological concerns, I’m not sure the oil would have ever been exploited. What impact would that have on the US and the world economy?

Texas oil discoveries delayed? I’ve already explored the consequences of delaying the discovery of the monster fields in the early 1930s, but what if the earlier Texas discoveries had been delayed too? What impact would less oil in the 1920s and early 1930s have on the development of US industrialization? On the balance between trucks and cars on the one hand and trains on the other? How would the higher cost of gas affect the balance between internal combustion and electric cars? Would production electric cars survive in some niche?

There’s a lot more potential here, but we’ll leave that for later newsletters.