The Impact of German and Japanese Petroleum Strategy on World War II

By JIAXUAN LU, China
Advisor: Minxia Zhang
​First prize, Boxue History Paper Competition

During the second industrial revolution, scientists invented numerous means of transportation, such as aircraft, automobiles and tanks. The prevalence of these novel vehicles in the beginning of twentieth century accelerated the development of the oil industry because operating them required petroleum, one of the rarest but most powerful fuels at that time. The subsequent fierce competition for petroleum, as a result of its scarcity, caused the great warfare in the 1930s. Petroleum was one of the most essential factors that determined whether Germany and Japan could triumph over the Allies and propagate their ideologies throughout the world. Some historians, such as Yehuda Bauer, consider that World War Two was a war caused by the clash of ideologies.[1] Other political scientists, such as Robert Paxton, believe that World War Two was caused by unfair treaties after World War One, such as the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.[2] Their hypotheses come from superficial facts: in the European theater of World War Two, Germany and Italy carved spheres of influence; in the Pacific theater, Japan desired to become a hegemonic power in Asia. Their focus on ideology and nationalisms are correct but neglect one of the most important causes, economics. Specifically speaking, it was petroleum. For the sake of petroleum, the separated theaters of Asia and Europe connected with one another as Germany attacked both France and USSR, and Japan attacked both China and the US. Unfortunately, the core conflicts of this war were still overshadowed by the conflicts of ideology after the failure of the Axis. It is only through exploring petroleum in World War II that we can truly understand German and Japanese strategy during a war heightened by ideologies and nationalism.

I. German Petroleum Strategy
 
a. Sparing no effort to obtain petroleum
 
As the most powerful country in the mainland of Europe in the 1930s, Germany had the world's best mechanized troops. The prestigious blitzkrieg strategy mainly relied on advanced German mechanized forces and air forces, but it demanded large amounts of petroleum to consume. Take the later Invasion of Poland as an example. At that time, Germany deployed 2500 tanks.[3] If all these tanks drove 100 kilometers, the consumption would be over 600 tons. Due to the distance from Germany to Poland, the tanks, at least, needed to drive 1,000 kilometers. Thus the consumption of petroleum for the non-stop journey to Poland was around 7,000 tons. Trucks, armored cars and planes, considered as auxiliaries, also demanded oil. However, the fact was that Germany lacked petroleum. The crude oil production in Germany was 0.2% of that in the world in 1937, and Hitler, together with his advisers, knew that 500,000 tons of oil per year from the German domestic oil industry[4] could not meet the huge petroleum consumption of Germany. Consequently, they realized that Germany was badly in need of petroleum from the foreign energy markets.
 
In the 1930s, there were two regions rich of crude oil in Europe: Romanian oil fields, located in southeast Europe, produced 8 million tons of oil per year,[5] while the Caucasus oil fields and Baku oil fields in the USSR produced 20 million tons of oil per year.[6] Germany bought 0.9 million tons of crude oil from USSR in 1939,[7] but Germany knew that it was unlikely that they could buy enough Soviet petroleum before the declaration of World War II. Thus, they planned an outright purchase of Romanian crude oil, though Romania was allied with Britain and the United States then. In 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the contentious regions between USSR and Romania. The invasion was ended by the negotiation between the two governments. The failure of Romania to safeguard its interest on this territorial dispute made Romanian people dissatisfied with their government and seizing this opportunity, Ion Antonescu, a Romanian politician and the later dictator of Romania, launched a revolution and overturned the government of Romania.[8] Along with his new Romania autocratic government, he started to incline his nation more favorably towards Germany instead of Britain and the United States. Romania signed a ten-year trade agreement with Germany on December 4th, 1939, which diverted the exportation of petroleum from Britain to Germany, with Germany acquiring 2.92 million tons of crude oil from Romania per year.[9] Meanwhile, Germany intensified the imports of crude oil from the United States and Latin America. Venezuela produced 20.17 million tons of petroleum yearly,[10] and the United States produced 0.16 billion tons of petroleum annually.[11] Venezuelan and American traders didn't care about their clients' ideologies, whether Fascist or Communist; if there was money to be made, they would trade. Thus, many American oil traders exported large amounts of oil to Germany, and it was because German government's inclination to war and the consequent great demand of petroleum that triggered more and more American oil traders to sell their petroleum to Germany so as to acquire huge profits from this exportation. Relying on these imports, Germany received 6 million tons of crude oil in 1939, which was sufficient for Germany to operate itself and even declare a great war.[12] In sum, importing foreign crude oil was the main tactic Hitler used to solve the want of petroleum before 1939.
 
However, Hitler himself clearly understands the defect of importing other countries' crude oil. The dependence on foreign countries for petroleum meant Germany was vulnerable when facing the siege and imports were being cut. Therefore, Hitler was dedicated to enhancing German independent energy, one of which was increasing the domestic production of petroleum. As soon as he came into power in the beginning of 1930s, Hitler started to take the technology of petroleum production seriously. As Nazi party leader, Hitler met with the senior officials of the famous energy corporation IG Farben, and he indicated his determination to develop synthetic oil, which exerted the superiority of Germany in coal by transferring it into petroleum. At that time, coal production in Germany occupied 15.3% of that in the world’s coal production.[13] The percentage number of the production of coal in Germany of that in the world was 75 times of the aforementioned percentage number (0.2%) of the production of crude oil. Therefore, in the 1920s, IG Farben began conducting research into synthetic oil, a type of oil made by coal, with Carl Bosch, the president of IG Farben, and Bergius, the scientist studying synthetic oil, even becoming Noble Prize winners in Chemistry for their contributions to synthetic oil. Finally, they succeeded. In 1939, Germany gained 1.5 million tons of oil from synthetic oil, most of which was yielded by IG Farben's factories.[14] Nonetheless, as the president of Standard Oil Howard meant when he said, "Hydrogenation of coal probably could never compete on an economic basis with crude oil", the cost of synthetic oil was gigantic, at ten times the cost as normal oil.[15] However, the independence of oil was indispensable to Germany because Germany would lose the import as soon as Hitler declared war. As history showed, synthetic oil, eventually, turned out to be the main source of Germany's crude oil production in wartime.
 
All in all, Germany in 1939 could gain around 8 million tons of oil per year, but Germany's estimation of petroleum consumption in that battle was over 12 million tons at that time.[16] As a result, Germany could hardly ensure the sufficiency of oil during the warfare. Of special note is that the expansion of Germany's territory and an embargo by other countries would aggravate the oil problem. The want of petroleum coerced Germany to declare war so as to grab other countries' petroleum for the maintenance of Germany's normal operation.
 
b. The abyss of petroleum
 
Before World War II, Germany reserved 2.4 million tons of petroleum.[17] The Nazi government estimated using 0.5 million tons of petroleum during the Invasion of Poland. However, the fact was that the blitzkrieg was a huge success and its strategic purpose was realized by only 0.1 million tons of petroleum consumption. Adding the petroleum consumption during the simultaneous battles, scholars found out that Germany totally consumed 0.155 million tons of petroleum.[18] Afterwards, it only cost Germany 0.5 million tons of petroleum to invade France, Netherlands and Belgium.[19] By seizing the trophy of defeated countries' petroleum reserves, Germany obtained around 8 million tons of petroleum. Therefore, Germany's petroleum reserve greatly rose after a successful series of invasions.
 
However, as warfare expanded, Germany's structure of the acquisition of petroleum altered as expected. Due to an embargo by Latin America and the United States, the amount of imported crude oil decreased. Romania became the only oil supplier to Germany, and consequently, Romania became the second largest oil exporting country in Europe. In some ways, due to the comparable superiority of Allies in the field of petroleum, Germany sank into the quagmire of a energy crisis.
 
Moreover, German consumption of petroleum was expanding. In 1940, Germany consumed 5.856 million tons of oil,[20]and its petroleum consumption increased from that number as Germany's territory expanded. Simultaneously, air battles against Britain cost large amounts of German oil. British oil production in 1940 reached 11.9 million tons, 172% of simultaneous German oil production.[21]Supplied with petroleum from the United States, Britain was superior to Germany from the aspect of oil. In comparison, Germans faced a petroleum crisis. Germans clearly realized that they could be devoid of petroleum within few years.[22]Thus, Germany needed new sources of crude oil. The blockade by Britain navy on the Atlantic forced Germany to give up importing oil from Latin America, and the poor infrastructures in Middle East and Africa made it hard for Germans to exploit crude oil. Thus the Soviet Union became the most suitable source of oil for Germany; the USSR's Caucasus oil fields and Baku oil fields were easier for Germany to reach and20 million tons of crude oil was produced from these two oil fields in 1937. Hence, for Germany, the war against the Soviet Union was triggered by the badly need for oil.
 
c. Oil Fields first, Moscow second
 
In 1941, German military forces launched Operation Barbarossa. They attacked the USSR from three directions: a northern push towards Leningrad, a central push towards Moscow and a southern push towards Caucasia. The German strategic goal was to occupy Moscow and the oil fields in the southern push within 4 to 6 weeks. It sounds absurd today that Germany dreamed of invading the country that had the largest land area in the world in about 1000 kilometers, but after comparing these ambitions with what Germany did in France and Greece, it was considered feasible. On the other hand, it was a must from the perspective of petroleum consumption. If petroleum ran out, blitzkriegs could not be launched any more, and consequently, victory would become impossible. Germany succeeded in occupying Minsk, the fifth largest city in the USSR, in the first two weeks, and started to attack Smolensk, a Soviet city at the midpoint between pre-war USSR-Germany boundary and Moscow. However, German mechanized troops met were with tenacious resistance at Smolensk. The Red Army, led by Zhukov, sacrificed nearly 0.5 million soldiers to defend Smolensk and ambient towns such as Yelnya. Encountering a Soviet human wave, German military forces could not move as fast as their assaults in Western Europe. Finally, though Germans won the battle, Red Army succeeded in making the battle of Smolensk last from July 10th to September 10th, 1941, which was longer than any previous German blitzkrieg.[23]The longer period of battle, the more supply Hitler's army needed and consumed. On the other hand, though the Soviet Union also demanded much petroleum, its reserves of crude oil were sufficient. In 1941, the Soviet Union's oil fields totally yielded 33 million tons of crude oil[24] while Germany obtained 10 million tons of petroleum. Two months of combat broke Hitler's dream. Therefore, from the perspective of economics, the battle of Smolensk was the turning point of World War Two. It resulted in the breaking of the legendary blitzkrieg and the start of unaffordable petroleum consumption for Germany afterwards.[25]
 
On account of the huge petroleum consumption required for attacking the Soviet Union from three directions, Germany had to give up some initiative. In September, 1941, German forces besieged Leningrad, but did not attack so as to save petroleum for attacking other fronts.[26] In early August, 1941, Hitler deployed German Tank Army Group Two and Field Army Group Two to the southern push in order to assault Kiev.[27]Hitler planned to intensify the power of the southern push so as to grab Soviet oil fields in Caucasus as soon as possible. This move was sensible from the perspective of energy economics, but it was objected to by German generals like Guderian because it undermined the power of the central push, considered the most significant push by these generals.[28] Hitler said," My generals know nothing about the economic aspects of war,"[29] but in response these generals exhorted Hitler to attack Moscow because it was vital for both politics and transportation. They thought that if Moscow were occupied, the economics of the Soviet Union would crash because transportation was necessary for the operation of its economy. Then, they thought that it would not be late for Germans to plunder Russia's energy then. Under the enticement of these generals, Hitler changed his mind and deployed his main military forces back to the central push and attempted to occupy Moscow first.
 
The hesitation of deciding whether attacking Moscow or Caucasus first was a economic huge failure. During these two self-contradictory deployments ordered by Hitler, German main military forces moved from the central push to the southern push and again back to the central push. This process consumed huge amounts of oil. Meanwhile, due to the Red Army's scorched earth policy in the regions that they lost and the long distance between the boundary of the Soviet Union to Moscow, Germany's supply train found it hard to keep pace with its speed of attacks. Germans had to use trucks to transport petroleum around 1000 kilometers from the former boundary of USSR to the forefront of the war. The low efficiency of transporting petroleum by trucks increased the cost of transportation, and made the supply situation worse for Germany. With the intervention of the Red Army in the Far East, the freezing weather in Moscow and the lack of petroleum for Germany to accelerate its attacking speed, the Germans failed to occupy Moscow as their petroleum ran out. They turned their direction towards Caucasia again to grab petroleum but used up their oil as soon as they arrived at Maikop, a minor oil field in Caucasia while the Soviets still retained dominion in Grozny and Baku, the two major oil fields in Caucasia.[30]Germany had failed again in Caucasia. Germany's previous successes were made by blitzkriegs, which could not be launched by infantries and had to be accompanied with consumption of petroleum. Therefore, without sufficient petroleum, Germany didn't possess military superiority any more. On the contrary, the assistance from Red Army in Far East strengthened the military power of the Soviet Union, and the Red Army recaptured their oil fields, which provided petroleum for Soviet mechanized forces to fight against Germany.
 
d. The last straw
 
Simultaneously, the Axis also faced impediments in Western Front. In 1943, British air forces started to implement strategic bombing against infrastructure in Germany. At first, these assaults aimed at airports and harbors, but almost nothing changed as German jets remained powerful in the air. At this time, Basil Liddell Hart, a general in the Allies and one of the officers responsible for this assaulting operation, found out that the Allies' goals were not aimed the weaknesses of Germany.[31]Subsequent to careful analysis, he said," Oil, which was Germany’s weakest point, was scarcely touched." After his profound finding, the Allies altered their main targets to the factories for synthetic oil production, such as IG Farben's factories. Consequently, production of synthetic oil in Germany decreased from 4.3 million tons[32] to 0.2 million tons[33]due to the bombings. The Allies also weakened the productivity of Romania's oil fields through numerous air strikes on Romania's oil producing factories in 1943,[34]which led to German's dearth of energy, which negatively affected German air and mechanized forces.
 
The lack of oil in Germany became one of the factors leading to Germany's failure, but Germans didn't give up. They prepared for a final battle by gathering hundreds of thousands of tons of oil together and planned an assault in the end of 1944, named as Ardennes Offensive. During this battle, Germans tried to occupy American oil reserves in Europe and Antwerp, the dominant harbor for Americans' logistics.[35] If the plan was realized, the war would last more than 6 months. Then German would have time to finish their study on nuclear weapons to recapture military superiority. Due to a mistake the German commanders made ascertaining where oil reserves were, they didn't succeed in finding American oil fields. Finally, the Germans were forced to retreat.[36] This battle confirmed the failure of Germans and afterward German annual petroleum productivity dropped to around 1 million tons, sealing Germany's failure in 1945.[37]
 
 
II. Japanese Petroleum Strategy
 
a. Pipe dream
 
Like Germany, Japan, another Fascist state at that time, also lacked oil. Japan only produced 270 thousand tons of crude oil before World War II while Japanese oil reserve was around 2.5 million tons in 1937. Though Japanese military forces didn't rely on mechanized troops, petroleum was still vital for Japanese military supplies, navies and air forces. The Japanese air force and navy were prominent throughout the world at that time, and planes and carriers needed huge amounts of petroleum to operate. Japan was also far behind Germany, which had techniques to transfer coal into petroleum. Japan had attempted to replicate the process but as Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, commented,' the goal (of developing synthetic oil in Japan) was not only ambitious, it was also extremely unrealistic. 'Japan didn't have a good command of mature synthetic oil technology. At that time, the Japanese oil market was also dominated by foreign countries: America's Standard and Holland's Shell occupied 60% of the market.[38] From 1930, Japan produced 7% of its yearly petroleum acquisition, and imported 80% from the United States and 10% from Dutch East Indies.[39]In fact, Japan possessed insufficient petroleum to fight against China in 1937 when Chiang Kai-shek provoked fierce battles in Shanghai and Yangtze River Delta to deplete the Japanese petroleum supply and attract the attention and sympathy from the United States and Great Britain. Contemporary American president Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to sanction Japan, but he was afraid that Japan might declare war against the United States, which didn't conform to the prevalent isolationism sentiment in the United States at that time. Due to the economic huge benefit from petroleum trades, Japan could not be easily embargoed by other countries[40]because private traders were only concerned about benefits, and by trading with Japan, they earned large amounts of profit. Moreover, both Japan and America understood the repercussion of the declaration of warfare. If America immediately cut the oil supply, without exaggeration, Japan would crumble within one year. It would be even doubtful that whether Japan had enough power to fight against the Allies. So the severance of petroleum supply would have definitely triggered a great war between Japan and these petroleum suppliers.
 
At the end of 1941, Japan had 5.93 million tons of oil in reserve and estimated that they would gain 460 thousand tons of crude oil in 1942, while estimating consumption of petroleum would reach 5.12 million tons (including oil for military and civil use).[41]Japan consumed huge amounts of petroleum during the long-period warfare against China, which led to Japan looking for new sources of petroleum. For instance, the Dutch East Indies, producing 7.3 million tons of oil per year,[42] became the target of Japanese military forces. In July, 1941, Japan invaded Indo-China Peninsula between the Dutch East Indies and occupied China. This time, the United States, Great Britain and Netherlands immediately embargoed Japan.[43] Originally, Japan hesitated about whether attack northwards towards the USSR or southwards towards Southeast Asia. However, motivated by the prospect of gaining 9.3 million tons of crude oil from Dutch East Indies and revenge for the Allies' sanctions,[44]Japan decided to sneak up on Hawaii Islands, the center of US Pacific forces, as the beginning of their offense against the US and the Allies. The attack on Pearl Harbor is considered a  great Japanese success and an infamous day in United States history but it was not a well-planned operation. In this action, Japanese air forces bombed four battleships and two destroyers, but failed to destroy any American carriers, the main threat to Japanese navy.[45]Furthermore, Japan neglected the oil reserves at Pearl Harbor. If these oil reserves were devastated, Japan could have destroyed the Pearl Harbor as well as eliminate almost all American petroleum reserves in Pacific. Nimitz said afterwards, "The primary objectives of the allied armed forces were to safeguard their own supply lines and then drive westward in order to capture bases from which Japan’s indispensable ‘oil line’ might be blocked."[46] Meanwhile, the Netherlands foresaw that Japan would declare war against the Allies. Therefore, in 1940, Shell sent a group of researchers to study the situation about petroleum on Dutch East Indies, and destroyed the facilities for extracting and refining crude oil soon after the destruction of the Pearl Harbor. This ensured that Japan could not restore the usual productivity of oil in Dutch East Indies within a short period of time.[47]
 
b. Opening a land route
 
Besides the destruction of facilities for extracting crude oil, transportation was also a troublesome issue. The crude oil extracted from Southeastern Asia had to be transported to the Island of Japan by sea. However, the cost of sea transportation was high, and Japanese faced a blockade by the Allies and continual bombings. 86% of Japanese ships were bombed and sunk during World War II, and 55% of Japanese ships were destroyed by the United States' blockade. Amongst all the ships, oil tankers were the preferred targets of the Allies.[48] To ensure the security of transits, Japan attempted to break through a land route. Japanese named this plan as Operation Ichi-Go, and they fiercely attacked Changsha, Hengyang, and other regions controlled by Chinese military forces. The Chinese struck back tenaciously, buying much time to further deplete Japan's limited petroleum. The famous battle was afterward called Defense of Hengyang, and it ultimately dashed Japanese's hope of opening a land route. Consequently, Tojo's cabinet was coerced to resign.
 
Though Japan was ultimately able to open the land route, it took Japan a long period of time. The operation started from 19 April, 1944 and ended on 31 December, 1944.[49] During the six months of battles, Japanese petroleum was depleted by the Allies, especially China. Afterwards, the oil reserves in Japan slumped, and the United States had already taken back the initiative of the war. The United States fiercely attacked any possible Japanese suppliers of petroleum.
 
Eventually, Japanese annual production of crude oil in 1944 fell to 1 million tons,[50] and by 1945, Japan only had 5.8 million tons of oil reserve. When oil reserve of a country is lower than 7 million tons, its navy can’t operate normally.[51] But Japan could not stop itself anymore. The final desperation included not only kamikaze attacks, which was conducted by fueling the amount of petroleum that only was sufficient to execute one-way flight to their targets onto planes, but the movement to create asbolin, an acrid oil obtained from wood soot. Under the slogan that two hundred roots of pine trees could let a plane fly for one hour, the Japanese population began to dig for roots. Heated for 12 hours, it was said that the roots of pine trees could turn out to be a substitute of oil. Producing a gallon of petroleum by roots cost 2.5 days. If they wanted to reach the target set by the government, they would need 125 million people working. At that time the total population of Japan was 71,998,104,[52] and 6,095,000 of them were soldiers,[53]but to the end of the great war, Japan only extracted 3000 barrels of asbolin from the roots, and no evidence showed that asbolin could even be used as a stable fuel of aircrafts.[54]Eventually, Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945 with only 43110 tons of petroleum left.[55]
 
III. Conclusion
 
Hitler was a commercially minded man. He came to power when the world sank into the Depression, presided over constructing highways and infrastructures to save Germany from the recession, and looked upon the warfare from the perspective of economics, emphasizing energy, especially petroleum, during World War II. Under his emphasis of energy, Hitler managed to overcome his opponents through blitzkriegs. Nonetheless, he didn't reflect upon Germany's failure at Smolensk, which was caused by his opponent Red Army's strategy of stalling for time and using human wave instead of defending towns and cities.. However, the most fatal mistake Hitler made was dispersing his forces to the central push to Moscow and the southern push to Caucasia, which resulted in the insufficient supplies for overcoming either side of his opponents. If the Germans occupied all the oil fields in Caucasia, Soviet production of crude oil would decrease by 70%. The industrial power of USSR would be undermined and situation of warfare would definitely be altered. However, Hitler made too many goals and underestimated his adversaries' power, both of which led to Germans' failure in both the central push and in the southern push. In fact, even if Hitler occupied the whole USSR, it only would mean to lengthen the period of war. Since the United States declared the war against the Axis, the Axis had almost no possibility to triumph. This not only was because of American superiority in technology, and manpower, but also because of American abundant oil reserves and sufficient crude oil productivity. In 1940, the United States produced 160 million tons of crude oil. In comparison, Germany only produced 8 million tons. The ratio of the productivity between German crude oil and American crude oil was 1:20,[56] which could only lead to an ending where Germany surrendered to the Allies.
 
The main target for Japan in World War II was energy. From Manchukuo to Pacific, places with abundant resources were the targets of Japan. This was mainly related to Japan's dearth of energy. Nevertheless, Japan made many fatal mistakes during the war, such as dismissing the action of bombing the oil field at Pearl Harbor, which was the same mistake Hitler made when he hesitated over whether attacking Moscow or Caucasia. The assault upon Hawaii was the beginning of the war, but due to this fatal mistake, the assault, in fact, was also the seed of Japan's failure. Moreover, Japan's overconfidence in Southeastern Asia made Japan forget the importance of protecting transits for transporting petroleum from the oil fields to the Japanese mainland. Consequently, Japanese petroleum could not be converted into what military forces demanded. If Japan preoccupied Dutch East Indies first, and then assaulted Pearl Harbor, Japan's situation of petroleum would not be as terrible as history shows. Assaulting oil fields could ensure that they wouldn't be destroyed by the Allies. Then, with the sufficient petroleum from Dutch East Indies, it would not be too late for Japan to assault Hawaii Island. Therefore, a tiny deviation in the strategies about petroleum might have affected the war fatefully, though the truth was that the petroleum the United States possessed was 6 times the amount of petroleum Japan controlled. The absolute petroleum superiority of the Allies made victory certain.
 
From the experience of World War Two, we should realize the importance of petroleum in warfare, whose function is similar to the function of currency in economy. A market without currency can hardly operate normally because it has no evaluation system for goods to exchange. Likewise, an army without petroleum can hardly attack fiercely and effectively because it cannot produce sufficient energy for aggressive weapons and vehicles like planes and tanks. In fact, through a simple oil embargo, the powerfulness of the Axis could be avoided. Therefore, we can conclude that one of the most effective sanctions is oil embargo: a government should restrict the export of petroleum to their enemies. However, people didn't reflect upon the petroleum policies even after 1945. Consequently, World War Two is not the only war dominated by strategic energy in modern history. Petroleum can be seen as a prominent factor in conflicts in the Middle East and Chechnya.
 
Nowadays, petroleum can be a civil good. Plastics derived from petroleum lighten our daily necessities. Asphalt made by crude oil improves the quality of roads. Vehicles run by petroleum improve the efficiency of transportation. Petroleum truly possesses these advantages, but it depends on how it is used. Only if we eliminate the negative aspects of the development of petroleum can we apply petroleum properly to benefit human society. But how to achieve it? We can draw inspiration from  the curtail of nuclear weapons, the first treaty for preventing people from applying high-tech for military abuse, to improve the rules of using petroleum, and enact regulations to prevent its misuse. We can distribute petroleum evenly to help developing countries' economies while stimulating developed countries to research renewable energy. In sum, we must use petroleum for peace.


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