The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

The Shah had found a new role; he was now to be the moralist for world oil. “Really oil is almost a noble product,” he declared. “We were almost careless to use oil for heating houses or even generating electricity, when this could so easily be done by coal. Why finish this noble product in, say, 30 years’ time when thousands of billions of tons of coals remain in the ground.” It was also the Shah’s inclination to become the moralist for world civilization. He had words of advice for the industrial nations. “They will have to realize that the era of their terrific progress and even more terrific income and wealth based on cheap oil is finished. They will have to find new sources of energy. Eventually they will have to tighten their belts; eventually all those children of well-to-do families who have plenty to eat at every meal, who have their cars, and who act almost as terrorists and throw bombs here and there, they will have to rethink all these aspects of the advanced industrial world. And they will have to work harder . . . . Your young boys and young girls who receive so much money from their fathers will also have to think that they must earn their living somehow.” His haughty stance, in the midst of shortages and huge price increases, would cost him dearly only a few years later, when he desperately needed friends.