Oil Conflicts In The United States

Oil conflicts has been caused by many reasons in many counties. Interstate conflicts, intrastate conflicts are two of the main oil conflicts happening around the world. As confusing it may sound, because they both sound fairly the same. Intrastate conflicts are issues happening within a state, another term for intrastate conflict would be civil conflict. For example, the American Civil war was a type of intrastate conflict, the whole war was in the United States and only involved American troops. This means interstate conflict is more than one state having conflicts. In other words, if one country is having disputes with another country then this would be considered an interstate conflict. Now relating it back to oil, oil is a resource the whole world uses. The countries with large amount of populaces can not go a day with out importing or exporting oil. This is to prove that oil is very crucial to our countries, and more importantly our economy. Since oil is limited to those who can consume it then they must rely on importation of oil. Since there is a demand for oil to some countries then they must delegate with countries and come to terms on how it will all work out. Now at time countries will disagree, and this is where interstate conflicts begin regarding oil. Take a look at China and Vietnam concerning the South China Sea. Both countries have been having territorial disputes over the South China Sea. Now of course there are more countries involved but the two major countries wrangling about the South China Sea is China and Vietnam. 2. Background on China China is an enormous country, as a country China imports roughly 7 million barrels per day. The U.S. Energy Information Administration states “China is now the world’s largest net importer of petroleum and other liquids fuels.” China beat the U.S. in mid 2014 when U.S. started to use less or import less. Since China is a country growing rapidly then of course they are going to become the world’s largest importer. What does this mean for China? China has a high demand for oil thenceforth they must find an unwavering amount of supply. In 2011 more than fifty percent of Chinas’ oil was all imported from foreign countries. Now it was estimated by The International Energy Agency (IEA) that China’s dependence on importation from foreign countries was going to go from fifty percent to sixty to seventy percent by 2015. The reason why China depends on foreign importation of oil and other energy resources is because of geographically cannot produce oil. Also, China has demonstrated it is budding very quickly socially, economically, and politically, therefore their energy demand will out beat other countries needs. China acquires most of its importation from the Middle East, however with all the issues happening in the Middle East, for example ISIS, Arab Spring, or other countries that are having issues with the Middle Eastern countries. All these events happening has made China concern about the volatility the Middle Eastern region, forcing them to diversify their energy supply. As mentioned before this is where the South China Sea takes play in China’s search for supply of energy resources. 3. The South China Sea Now the South China Sea is in the Pacific Ocean, just south of the of China’s mainland. The South China Sea is a rich part of the ocean. What I mean by rich it that the South China Sea is full of oil. Although it is …show more content…
If all six were to have gone to war, yes, it would have been hard for all the countries to claim a section of the South China Sea. Either way China would have come out on top, because of the large resources compared to the other countries involved. Who knows, mostly like the U.S. would have been gotten involved and it would have been more intense. However even though it was big interstate conflict over oil, the first step to getting things resolved between the six countries was in 2011. Since the Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea was agreed on all six countries have still talk about other minor issues regarding the South China