Iran War Expected to Spark Global Energy Crisis. Here’s What Americans Can Expect at the Pump.

**Tucker Carlson** (0:00)
The first thing to know about the two wars now in progress in Ukraine and in Iran is that they're about energy, because Iran and the countries around Iran produce about 20% of global oil supply. Russia, meanwhile, produces about 12% of global oil supply. So these are the biggest energy producing regions in the world, and the wars have gravely affected their ability to produce that energy and to ship it anywhere else and to refine it for that matter. So that's the first thing to know. The second thing to know is that energy is the same as prosperity. The more energy a country uses, the richer it is. There is a one-to-one correlation between energy use and the size of your economy, GDP, roughly measured. I mean, look at the list of the countries that consume the most energy and put it side by side the richest countries, and they are directly connected. The country that uses the most energy per capita on the planet is Qatar, which is also by most measures the richest country. Tiny population, 350,000, massive natural gas supplies, huge per capita wealth in that country, and huge per capita energy use, about roughly 19,000 kilowatt hours per citizen. On the other end, the poorest country in the world, arguably South Sudan. Their energy use, per capita, 51 kilowatt hours. United States, by the way, about 12,000 kilowatt hours. Now, for the past 15 or 20 years, maybe 25 years, elements of the American Leadership Class have been scolding this country and the West for using too much energy. We use too much energy. We're destroying the earth by using energy. By the way, bombing civilian populations somehow does not destroy the earth, but turning on the lights or having an MRI or driving a suburban, that destroys the earth, say the people who put solar farms in the woods.
But that propaganda, as absurd as it is, has effectively hidden from many Americans the direct correlation between the amount of energy they use and the lives they live, and that would include their life expectancy and the likelihood their children will survive infancy. And everything that is good or considered progress in our society, all of it derives from one simple fact. We consume an awful lot of energy. And to the extent we consume less energy, those facts will change. In other words, we will become poorer. Again, energy is the same as wealth. So when a country uses less energy, or when energy prices become unaffordable for the majority of the population, that country by definition becomes poorer. There's no debate about this. This is the iron law of economics, of reality, of civilization. Energy equals prosperity.
So if you take two steps back, and you see one country, the United States, waging two simultaneous wars, one against Iran and the other against Russia, and make no mistake, the United States is at war with Russia, the Trump administration's intelligence from the CIA and other intel agencies is being used by the Ukrainian government to target drones and missiles. So the US government, us, your tax dollars, is at war with the government of Russia, whether you're aware of that or not, whether you wanted it or not, and of course most Americans don't. And the effect of that is what? To destabilize the Russian regime, break up Russia into 15 separate republics? Well, no, not yet.
The effect is to hike global energy prices, because once again, Russia is the producer of about 12% of global oil supply and about 5% of refined petroleum products. And the war the United States is waging against Russia at this stage, through its proxies in Western Europe and Ukraine, is a war against energy. About half of Russian refineries have been hit by missiles or drones targeted by the United States.
So at some point you have to ask, why would we do that? Why would the United States, under the previous president, blow up the Nord Stream Pipeline, which was the source of cheap energy from Russia into Western Europe, our allies in Western Europe, countries that are occupied still by American troops 80 years later, our closest allies on the globe? Why would we deprive them of cheap energy? Who knows? There's a story here, though, and someone should tell it. And then in this war, which began February 28th, of course, the central fact of Iran is not whether it has an active nuclear program or how many missiles it has or how many crowds in downtown Tehran chant mean things about Israel or the United States. I mean, those are interesting data points, but they're not really the core fact of Iran. The core fact of Iran is its geography and the fact that it sits on the northern side of the Strait of Hormuz, which is the opening, famously, at the eastern end of the Persian Gulf, through which 20% of global energy flows. And then if you look at a map, it curves around into a thing called the Red Sea.