A sharp plunge in oil prices due to the coronavirus pandemic creating a supply glut has created major problems for oil-producing countries especially the US where the oil prices plummeted to a negative on Monday. The analysis was done by Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary in DNA, the world's most-watched news show.
It was earlier said that the future of the country which has sufficient reserves of oil will be bright but the COVID-19 pandemic has proved these claims as hollow and most big countries of the world including America are struggling to sell their crude oil supply.
For America the last few years has all been about oil. In 1945, a controversy related to oil was the reason that nuclear weapons were used against a country for the first and the last time.
The reason was that in 1940, America was angry with Japan's aggressive policies and stopped supplying oil to it. Japan wanted to conquer the whole of Asia but it did not have enough oil to continue the war. At that time, America was one of the largest producers of oil.
After this, in order to take revenge from America, Japan carried out an aerial attack on Pearl Harbor in America. More than 2,000 US naval soldiers were killed in this attack, and only after that the US formally joined the second World War.
In order to teach Japan a lesson, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in July 1945.
Even Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991 was related to oil and oil prices. Iraq had accused Kuwait of tampering with oil prices and producing more oil than the stipulated quantity. In the invasion, about 605 oil wells were set on fire by the Iraqi forces.
America and its allies also joined this war because America did not want Iraq's share in oil production to increase. If Iraq had won this war, Iraq would have captured 65 per cent of the world's oil production, and the US was not in favour of this shift.
It is believed that America had spent about Rs 4.5 lakh crores on this war.
Oil — the reason that the world was forced to bear the onslaught of nuclear war and several other wars has now become cheaper than water. The oil-thirsty world has been shown the mirror by a virus.