The US is currently the leading oil producer in the world (and some day, I’m going to have to find the discussions I had on this very forum from a decade or more ago where people were tell me that was crazy).
Cribbing some #s from wikipedia:
1) USA 11.7mil bpd
7) Canada 3.6mil bpd
11) Venezuela 2.2mil bpd
12) Mexico 2.2mil bpd
(Caveat: it looks like oil production in Venezuela peaked near 3.5mil bpd)
So, lets assume an expansionist US directly controls the territory of those other three countries. Rather, lets just assume a country with similar property rights and economic system to the US does (private mineral rights being protected in the US is a large cause of its current oil boom). We’ll assume this happened within the 19th century, as well. So when oil became truly the world’s fuel, these borders are fairly set.
That gives you a country producing about 20-21mil bpd, about 1/4 of current world production and about 2/3 of all of OPEC’s production (slightly skewed as in this scenario, a major member of OPEC has been annexed). Thats also assuming not much higher production - reasonable in Canada, but Mexican production would likely be a bit higher and Venezuelan would almost definitely be far higher.
So, in a world where an alt-US controls this much of the world’s oil supply, what are the impacts on the world’s economy and geopolitics?