Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century
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Today, I have the pleasure to chat with Daniel Yergin. He is literally the world's leading authority on energy. His book, The Prize, won the Pulitzer Prize about the entire history of oil. His most recent book is The New Map, Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations. Welcome to the podcast, doctor Ergen. Glad to be with you. My first question is a book like the prize. It's literally a history of the entire 20th century. Right? Because everything in the last 150 years involves oil that's happened since then. How does one begin to write a book like that?
I think you begin by, not realizing what you're doing. I mean, I agreed to do that book. I said I'd do it in 2 years. It took me 7. And, the stories just became so compelling and it became woven in with the history of the 20th century. And the funny thing was that some years before that, a publisher had flown up from New York to see me when I was teaching at Harvard and, said she had a very interesting idea for a book. And I said, what? And she said, a history of the 20th century. I said, that's an interesting idea. And I thought myself, it's rather broad. And actually, the century wasn't over
books which are nominally about one subject, but the author just feels a need to like, if you're if you really wanna understand my topic, you have to understand basically everything else in the world. And I think a couple of biographies, especially, if you read, and I think a couple of biographies especially, if you read, Kira's biography of LBJ or Cock and Stalin, it's just like it it is, it is a history of the entire period in their country's history when this is happening. And I wonder if it was for you, you actually did just wanna write about oil and, like, you you just have to write about
I think it's also I mean, because I think geopolitics, narrative, storytelling, those are things that are very much in my interest. And my first book had actually been a narrative history of the origins of the Soviet American Cold War. So I brought that perspective to it. And as I was writing the the the prize, it was just I I didn't intend to do all of that, but the discoveries, I just one thing led to another. I would just be amazed and think this is an incredible story and no one knows it. And, and I did see how somehow in my mind, you know, I did not do an a detailed outline, but the piece
Yeah. So, we'll get to the new map and the contemporary issues around energy later on. But first, I wanna just begin with the beginning of the history of oil. One of the things you notice not only in the early stories of oil with people like Drake and Rockefeller, but also even very modern, like, the Frackers, like Mitchell and so forth. It's just that you have these incredibly risk taking and strong personalities who have been the dominant characters in the oil industry. And I wonder if there's a specific reason that oil attracts this kind of personality.
Well, I think maybe it attracts those are the ones who are successful. Mhmm. It takes a lot of, you know, willpower and perseverance. I mean, clearly, Rockefeller had an idea what to do and how but he was also creating a new kind of business organization as he's doing it and a new kind of industry at the same time that he was doing it. And then if we jump ahead to this guy George Mitchell, who's more responsible than anybody else for the shale revolution that has transformed the current position of the United States in the world. He, I mean, he kept at it for 18 years when people told him you'
One thing that really struck me is how fast things kick off. So 19 1859, colone
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