A Tale of Two Gulfs

Taking off on the classic Charles Dickens work, A Tale of Two Cities, perhaps the economic, environmental, and geopolitical aspects of petroleum can be woven together as A Tale of Two Gulfs.

Growing up in India, I, like many others, was familiar with “the Gulf” to which hundreds of thousands of Indians headed every year.  The geographic area referred to was the Persian Gulf, which had gained prominence thanks to the phenomenal growth in employment in the oil-rich Gulf countries—specifically, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait. 

Here in the US, in the current contexts, “the Gulf” now refers to the Gulf of Mexico, where oil has been gushing out from a mile under the sea for two months now.  The live video feed from the site continues to mesmerize not only us here in America, but in the rest of the world as well.

But, more than thirty years ago, it was that other Gulf, and the oil there, that monopolized the attention of Americans.  In 1979, the Iranian revolution ousted the Shah, and installed a theocratic regime, and the geopolitical instability that resulted triggered a massive increase in the global price for oil.  The high oil prices that were recorded then went unmatched until very recently, immediately before the Great Recession. 

As the planet watched the unfolding events in Iran, and struggled to cope with the high price of oil, President Jimmy Carter addressed the country—and the world—in the “Crisis of Confidence” speech.  Carter noted early on in that speech on July 15, 1979, “I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve our serious energy problem?”

Thirty-one years have gone by since Carter’s frustration that we have not been able to figure a way out of the energy problem.  Six months later, after losing the election in November, Carter stated in his State of the Union address that the official position of the United States was that “an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Since then, we have been quite fixated on the Persian Gulf, with mostly disastrous economic and human costs.  While Carter couched this doctrine in the context of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the altered landscape since the fall of the Communist bloc has apparently not dented our perspectives on the Persian Gulf and petroleum. 

Even more, despite the political fixation, I suppose most Americans are unfamiliar with the geography and geopolitics.  Every once in a while I quiz students on the Persian Gulf and Middle Eastern countries, and rare is a student who correctly identifies at least a half of them.   

As problems began in the “other” Gulf—the Gulf of Mexico—I asked students in my introductory class to quiz at least six on campus about the catastrophe.  One of the questions was to list all the states in the union that border the Gulf of Mexico.  The results of this exercise, also, were far from encouraging. 

Our collective apathy about the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico, and the valued resource that is in common—petroleum—is depressing.  Particularly when we project it against the background of Carter’s speech from 1979, in which he observed that “the energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.”

We threw out any sense of urgency once the Persian Gulf crisis eased.  The Gulf of Mexico gusher, which ought to have been avoided in the first place, will be capped, hopefully sooner than later.  But, even after the images of oil-stained pelicans disappear from the daily news, I hope we will stay focused enough to write the rest of A Tale of Two Gulfs, and get to my favorite phrase: The End!