Quotes from Daniel Yergin

Does all this mean that China and the United States are headed for what Harvard professor Graham Allison called the "Thucydides Trap"? Named for the ancient Athenian military historian, the concept depicts the risk of war arising from the collision between a "dominant" power and a "rising" power.

Mitchell Energy was contracted to provide 10 percent of Chicago's natural gas. But the reserves of gas in the ground to support that contract were running down.

China today is the world's largest producer of steel (almost 50 percent), aluminum, and computers—as well as the rare earths necessary for electric vehicles and wind turbines. In one three-year period, 2011–13, China consumed more cement than the United States did in the entire twentieth century.

In the decade and a half following its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China's oil consumption increased two and a half times over. It is currently the eighth-largest oil producer in the world, at 3.8 million barrels per day. But its demand has surged far ahead of domestic supply. It has become the world's largest importer of oil: by the beginning of 2020, 75 percent of total demand.

In 2000, 1.9 million cars were sold in China, 17.3 million in the United States. By 2019, the number was 25 million in China and 17 million in the United States.

About half of the world's oil tanker shipments pass through the South China Sea, not only to China, but also to Japan and South Korea. For Japan and South Korea, the possible risk of disruption would come from actions by China. For China, however, there is only one "certain power"—the United States and, in particular, the U.S. Navy.

As in the 1960s, oil and energy were now available in abundance and, thus, they were not a constraint on economic growth. Supplies were safe again. Excess oil capacity around the world exceeded demand by 10 million barrels per day, equivalent to 20 percent of the free world's consumption.

an entrepreneur from a small North Carolina town once known as Shoe Heel. Yet Malcom McLean, otherwise known as "Idea-a-Minute" McLean, is one of the most consequential figures in the history of transportation.

The sprawling Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, was originally built for royal guests. It was converted into a grand commercial hostelry in 2011. In October 2017, it became the venue for a thirty-five-hundred-person futuristic investment conference, populated by leading financial and business figures from both Saudi Arabia and around the world

Starting off with a tiny trucking company that he built into a major enterprise, McLean went on to unleash the container revolution in world shipping that is the foundation of today's global economy.

On April 26, 1956, cranes at the port of Newark, New Jersey, lifted up fifty-eight truck bodies, minus their wheels and cabins, and put them on a surplus World War II tanker bound for Texas. "We are convinced that we have found a way to combine the economy of water transportation with the speed and flexibility of overland shipment," McLean announced.

His next step was to detour ships on their way back from Vietnam, now empty of cargo, to Japan to pick up containers filled with inexpensive goods destined for U.S. customers. Manufacturers in the Asian "tigers"—South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—followed suit. It was the spread of this innovation, and the networks and system that implemented it, that integrated East Asia into the world economy.

over two hundred people—members of the royal family, business and government leaders, present and former cabinet ministers—were arrested, charged with corruption, and detained in that very same Ritz-Carlton, now transformed into a prison. Some of the detainees only the week before had been shaking hands with the foreign visitors at the investment conference

In 1980, the year Deng began his reforms, McLean initiated the first container service to China.

Saleh had his own battles to fight, most notably with a rebellious group called Ansar Allah ("Supporters of God"). Its base were the Zaydi tribes in the rugged mountains of northwest Yemen (with some spillover into the very south of Saudi Arabia). The Zaydis represent about 40 percent of the Muslim population of Yemen. They are considered close to Shia, though with doctrines different from those of Iran, and with some affinities to Sunni.

Oil is not merely the heart of the Iraqi economy. In economic terms, Iraq is oil, which makes up over 90 percent of government revenues, over 99 percent of exports, and almost 60 percent of GDP. The World Bank describes Iraq as "the world leader in terms of dependence on oil.

On Salman's accession to the throne in 2015, Mohammed, heretofore largely unknown, catapulted at age twenty-nine into the position of deputy crown prince—and quickly assumed additional power as minister of defense and head of both the supreme economic council and the supreme council overseeing the oil industry.

Houthi was killed by Saleh's forces in 2004. Thereafter, his fervent followers took his name—the Houthis. They also received support from Iran and Hezbollah.

the Houthis captured Sanaa, Yemen's capital. They wasted no time in establishing direct air service between Sanaa and Tehran.

Cars generate about 6 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions.

In 1933, Standard Oil of California—Socal, now Chevron—won the right to explore for oil in Saudi Arabia. On March 4, 1938, a telegram was dispatched from Saudi Arabia to the San Francisco headquarters of Socal. It reported that in a test in the eastern province on a well called Damman #7, at a depth of 4,694 feet, oil had flowed at the rate of 1,585 barrels per day.

No new car company had been started in the United States since 1925.

Shale gas was proving to be cheaper than conventional natural gas. In 2000 shale was just 1 percent of natural gas supply. By 2011 it was 25 percent, and within two decades it could reach 50 percent.

in 1959, with the discovery in Manchuria of a giant oil field named Daqing—which means "Great Celebration." By the 1980s, the domestic petroleum industry was meeting the nation's needs and also producing a surplus of oil that was exported, principally to Japan.