Does this to war?

Many people who first hear about the Peak Oil and Peak Gas phenomena, and who start thinking and worrying about the far reaching consequences, come to the following question: Does this lead to war? And does war lead to terror when Muslim countries are being occupied because they control the largest remaining oil reserves?

These questions are politically explosive. On the one hand it would not make sense to pretend that all wars are about oil. That\'s immediately clear when one remembers that the history of petroleum is only 150 years old, whereas people have been waging wars with each other for thousands of years.

On the other hand it would be incorrect to claim that no wars have been or are being waged for oil and gas, and that the coming Oil Peak cannot intensify such struggles, because all industrialized countries are dependent on oil to a very high degree. To obtain control over large oil reserves, even through war, can be the aim of power politics. Petroleum therefore has a very important strategic role to play in international politics.

The Association of the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) Switzerland does not have the possibility to explore and document the manifold and complicated interactions between war and oil, neither in the past 150 years nor in the present. However it does benefit from ongoing academic research in this field and is in direct contact with the History Department of the University of Basel. Dr. Daniele Ganser, who at the same time is the official honorary president of the ASPO in Switzerland, is leading a research project there, entitled \'Peak Oil: The petroleum struggle and supply security in Switzerland, 1859-2009\'. Further information concerning the military struggle for oil can be obtained directly from the research project homepage: www.histsem.unibas.ch/peakoil