WI: Crash of '79 (Book) Scenario Occurred

Delta Force

Banned
Paul Erdman's Crash of '79 ends with the Shah of Iran detonating salted bombs over most of the petroleum fields in the Middle East, blanketing them in fallout that will remain fatally radioactive for decades. There isn't much detail about what happened next, apart from the United States surviving the near collapse of the dollar and its banking system before entering into a severe recession.

What if something like that had occurred between the early 1970s or early 1990s, removing a large amount of Middle Eastern petroleum from the market? Perhaps the Yom Kippur War goes out of control and results in Israeli nuclear strikes on Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Maybe events in Iran turn out a bit differently, with Imperial Iran collapsing later when it has a more advanced nuclear power program, and/or Iraq somehow acquires nuclear weapons and uses them in an alternate Iran-Iraq War or during Desert Storm.

What would the aftermath look like for the world? Would the West suffer economic collapse due to the loss of petroleum? Would Soviet fortunes reverse as they become the largest exporter of petroleum in the world, in addition to being the largest natural gas exporter? Would there be a push for nuclear disarmament or at least greater arms control?
 
Off the top of my head:

The West takes a nasty supply shock for sure. Yet, it isn't without assets of its own. That was the heyday of the North Sea oil fields, there was oil to be had in Venezuela and even in the US itself. The most likely result is a new equilibrium around alternative energy including natural gas (which the US has in abundance) and new oil sources found by better technology and more exploration. It's certainly a calamity in the short term, but hardly a fatal one.

With the Middle East out of the oil business, there are some rough times in that part of the world.

While this may help the Soviet Union in the short term, I doubt any Western government is going to base its energy policy off dependence on Soviet sources. And, given the rot in the Soviet economic system, I doubt any of this will stop the collapse of the USSR. Paradoxically, it could help speed the collapse as a short-term bump from oil exports may preclude any attempt at structural reform.

The hardest hit region may be East Asia. Japan and South Korea are hit brutally by this initially, but they could recover and emerge as leaders in an alternate energy economy. Without thinking through the whole issue in depth, I suspect China could be delayed in emerging as a global manufacturer.
 
Something similar in ‘The first Nuclear World War’ written by Patrick O’Heffernan, Amory B Lovens and L Hunter Lovens about the dangers of nuclear proliferation and there is an interesting scenario in the front.


Through the failure of the NPT, Iraq and Iran have both managed to build several nuclear bombs in the 10-15kt ranges.

Following a disastrous Iranian attack on Iraq December 1986, Iran drops a bomb on Baghdad, Basra and some of Iraq’s oil fields.

In retaliation Iraq drops bombs on Tehran, Kharg Island and the oil fields in the Khuzistan region (the bombs on the oil fields have cobalt added to them).

Iran retaliates by bombing the Saudi oil loading facilities at Ras Tanura and Ju’aymah and the corresponding Kuwaiti facilities at Umm Aysli in retaliation for their financial support of Iraq.

Iraq replies with another bomb on Tehran and one on Qom, which effectively ends the war, but not before a sizable chunk of the Middle East oil production capacity had been turned into radioactive dust and many areas too hot to enter.

Now having enough bombs to remake a sizable chunk of the oil areas unapproachable is probably a bit too much by this time but the oil loading terminals are another matter, they can be counted on one hand and it doesn't matter how much oil you are pumping if it cant be shipped out of the area.
 
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Nebogipfel

Monthly Donor
Paul Erdman's Crash of '79 ends with the Shah of Iran detonating salted bombs over most of the petroleum fields in the Middle East, blanketing them in fallout that will remain fatally radioactive for decades. There isn't much detail about what happened next, apart from the United States surviving the near collapse of the dollar and its banking system before entering into a severe recession.

IIRC, there is a near-collapse of the US (the last line was something about the lights literally going out in Manhattan). Only Switzerland seems to get a way somehow :rolleyes:

Alfred Coppel's Apocalypse Brigade (1981) has a similar topic. Here a private consortium uses radionuclides to contaminate the oil fields for s a couple of decades after fundamentalists took over SA and most of the gulf states.

Talking about Erdman, Last Days of America (also 1981) would also make an interesting AH (Germany under Strauss gets nukes and cuts a deal with the Soviets).
 
It depends when it happens....

In the late 1980s and 1990s, western production was up and running following development after the oil shocks of the 1970s. Prolonged recession in the West.

In the mid-late 70s the effect in the West is far-worse given that the western response to the 1973 oil shocks hasn't come online yet. North Sea oil production is very low and the Alaskan north slope is 0-5 years away.

What does this mean for the US/Europe? Economic depression. Oil prices and scarcity during the shock would suck available capital out of the western world. Credit dries up (less of a factor in the 70s compared to today). People literally could not get to work because they couldn't afford fuel or it simply isn't available (similar to 1973).

Sure, there would be oil around in the west - just A LOT LESS of it and a lot less capital to invest in new extraction technology and infrastructure.

US domestic sources: the technology to reach the hard-to-get reserves didn't exist yet so the country's domestic production is still in decline (OTL). Capital challenges makes offshore or North Slope development very challenging.

North Sea: Production of oil really came online in 1976. By 1979 it was at 2M barrels a day. I imagine this could reach 4 M barrels per-day a little sooner depending on the severity of the shock.

Massive butterflies...
 
wow, I haven't thought about that book in ages... nicely poetic in the end when the Shah glows in the dark along with his air force

well for one thing we build a lot of nuclear power plants in a big hurry and gas rationing remains a thing for a long time. The economic meltdown would be a problem for a decade or so (mostly the aftershocks) and when the Soviets start exporting energy in the late 1980s and early 1990s they get rich
 
Here's what I think might happen in the USA:

1. In the early to mid 1980's, gasoline will be severely rationed in the USA. Most of the crude oil will be used to produce diesel fuel to keep trucks, buses for public transit and railroads going.

2. There would be aggressive moves to expand oil production in the USA, especially in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana and Texas enjoy major economic booms as offshore oil production in the Gulf expands exponentially.

3. Accelerated research into fracking means by the early 1990's, shale formations such as Bakken in the Dakotas and the Marcellus in the US Northeast start to get exploited for natural gas and oil production.

4. Coal production expands much faster, especially earlier development of the Powder River Basin coal field than OTL.

5. The oil sands in Alberta province are exploited much earlier.

In short, by 1993 the destruction of the Middle Eastern oilfields is just a bad memory as the vast majority of American energy demand is now satiated by vastly expanded domestic oil, natural gas and coal production.

I also see in Europe that expansion of North Sea and Norwegian petroleum resources will happen on a much faster scale. And the Soviets will likely aggressively expand their own petroleum fields not only to meet Soviet domestic needs, but also exports to Europe and eastern Asia.

An interesting case would be Japan. By the late 1970's, Japan had pretty much phased out the use of coal from Hokkaido and Kyushu to generate power; the destruction of the Middle Eastern oilfields will force the Japanese to re-open coal mining on Hokkaido and Kyushu in a big way, and by the early 1990's--after the Seikan Tunnel opens--a major export by rail out of Hokkaido to the rest of Japan will be coal from Hokkaido coal fields to fuel coal-fired power plants.
 
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