“The United States, once the world’s largest producer and still its largest consumer, must import half of its oil supply, weakening its overall strategic position and adding greatly to an already burdensome trade deficit – a precarious position for a great power” (Yergin 14). So said Daniel Yergin in the prologue of his 1990 bestseller The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power. Today, oil retains its importance in the hydrocarbon societies of developed and developing countries as a…