The Prize

The history of oil and its entanglement with industrialisation, transport, warfare, national power and the world economy. Underneath the narrative sits a harder claim: modern civilization runs on energy abundance. Oil rewrote geography and geopolitics, creating corporations, reshaping military strategy, elevating some states and hollowing out others. Every financial and digital system remains grounded in the physical world — money coordinates claims on resources, and energy is what makes resources useful.