Oil has long been used as a geopolitical weapon. Could electrified transport change that?

Climate scientists have been clear that if we want to reduce carbon emissions and slow the pace of global warming, one crucial step is moving from a transportation system run on fossil fuels to one powered by electricity.

But it's possible that doing so might neutralize other toxic aspects of the petroleum industry, such as volatile prices and armed conflict.

"The ability to electrify transportation and get off combusting fossil fuels, and oil specifically, means we would solve massive geopolitical problems, which have been just a plague for the last 100 years," said Adam Scott, executive director of Shift, a Toronto-based charity that advocates for sustainable investing.

Oil has always been an impetuous commodity, susceptible to wild price swings owing to a variety of economic and political factors. But between the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the last couple of years have been especially nervy. 

On one day in April 2020, the price of a barrel of oil briefly went negative (-$37 US). Since then, it's flirted with all-time highs, reaching $119 last month. And consumers feel it when they fill up.

The current surge in the price of oil has been a key driver of inflation around the world, but the cost of this commodity can be measured in more than just dollars. Oil has long been a lever for political change, as well as a pretext for war.

Oil has a variety of applications, including in home heating and the manufacture of plastics. But it's predominantly used to make transportation fuels. So what happens when society at large moves away from such a mercurial, morally fraught commodity and starts to rely on electricity to power vehicles instead?

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One of the chief problems with oil, Scott says, is that it's priced globally.

"Everybody in Canada is angry about energy prices all of the time, but there's very little we can do about it," said Scott. "Even as the world's fourth-largest exporter of oil, we have no influence over the price at all."

The same goes for our southern neighbour. Despite being the biggest oil producer, the United States leans on other petroleum-rich countries when the price at the pumps becomes a political liability.

"We see the U.S. president begging the king in Saudi Arabia to produce more oil," Scott said. "It's painful to watch."

Because it has been so lucrative, oil production has been a well-known source of conflict, from the CIA-assisted coup in Iran in 1953 to the independence struggles of South Sudan. A 2013 policy brief by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard states bluntly that "oil is a leading cause of war," estimating that "between one-quarter and one-half of interstate wars since 1973 have been linked to oil."

Countries that are generously endowed with oil and gas deposits — sometimes called "petro-states" — often wield this over other nations.