The Appropriation of Oil and Natural Gas as a Strategy for U.S. Hegemony

The Iran War has been severely affecting the United States militarily, but behind the scenes, Washington is executing a strategic maneuver that is reshaping the global supply of oil and gas through armed, yet silent, domination. The United States used to be very vulnerable to oil shocks, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz would have been a catastrophe, given that, in the past, the country would not have been able to produce enough oil to meet domestic demand. But today, Washington leads as the world’s largest producer of oil, gas, and refined products, as well as the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). There is a tendency to believe that rising oil prices harm the United States, but the opposite is true. Rising energy prices are no longer a threat to Wall Street: that is the goal.

It was after the war in Ukraine, for example, that the United States became the world’s largest exporter of LNG. By sanctioning Moscow and destroying the Nord Stream pipelines—underwater structures built to transport natural gas from Russia directly to Germany via the Baltic Sea—the U.S. not only affected Russia but also made Europe a permanent customer of the United States, ensuring long-term profits. This is no accident: the oceanic separation of the United States makes gas supply more expensive, so Washington needed to eliminate competition from cheap Russian gas.

The United States’ main competitors in the global LNG market are Qatar and Australia. Just as the U.S. used the war in Ukraine to undermine Russia, Washington is using the war in Iran as a pretext to weaken Qatar’s position in the LNG market. This has driven up gas prices in Europe and Asia without affecting the U.S., which is also emerging as a reliable energy supplier in an unstable world.

Behind the scuttling of the Nord Stream pipeline lies the U.S. takeover of the Levantine Basin, one of the world’s largest gas fields, located along the coast of Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. Furthermore, there are indications of corporate usurpation of gas and oil in Gaza, orchestrated by the American company Chevron, which signed a $35 billion gas deal with Israel in December. Resolution 2803, established by the Security Council and responsible for endorsing the peace and stabilization plan for the Gaza Strip, briefly mentions “water, electricity, and sewage,” but the words “energy” and “gas” do not appear even once. However, at the first Peace Council Summit, oil and gas platforms suddenly began appearing in corporate advertisements for “New Gaza.”

Added to this is the invasion of Venezuela. In September 2025, in the so-called “Operation Southern Spear,” the United States positioned ships at the Latin American country’s border under the pretext of combating drug trafficking in the Caribbean. In December, the fleet revealed its true objective by openly pirating Venezuelan oil, a campaign that culminated in the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro in January and the seizure of the world’s largest oil reserves. To this day, the U.S. Navy remains stationed off the Venezuelan coast, determining which oil tankers may enter and exit—not coincidentally, most of them belong to Chevron. The U.S. government itself is formalizing this theft by issuing Treasury waivers and General Licenses to its own companies, as if they held the rights to the oil.

The recent U.S. moves are not random: Washington needed a second strategic oil reserve before provoking the ongoing chaos in Iran. More than that, these moves are part of a broader strategy to isolate China from its energy partners. About 60% of Iranian oil is exported, and, like Russia and Venezuela, much of it is shipped to China at low prices. Beijing receives about a third of its oil from these three suppliers—and the United States has succeeded in attacking or significantly affecting all of them.

All of these factors combined provide Washington with multiple sources of revenue and control over the energy production and supply chain. The so-called “Donroe Doctrine”—a term adopted by Donald Trump as a rebranding of the “Monroe Doctrine”—involves shifting the global energy corridor to the Western Hemisphere, thereby bringing the market into the heart of the United States. However, these plans are not exclusively Trump’s, nor were they suddenly improvised: they are the legacy of the Bush administration, which invaded Iraq in 2003 in search of oil. At that time, the rhetoric employed involved “bringing democracy” to the country, but under the Trump administration, the United States seems to have abandoned its own attempts at legitimization and embraced the use of force as an end in itself.

Since every action requires planning, the practice of U.S. “piracy,” revealed in the attempt to dominate the energy sector on a global scale, is grounded in its National Security Strategy, released as far back as November 2025. The priorities defined throughout the strategy do not hide the true face of the “Trump Corollary”; on the contrary, they merely confirm the objectivity of the energy policies promoted by the U.S. government as a means of ensuring greater access to the global energy supply chain. Thus, the principles to be followed to achieve the goal in question are all centered on the “America First” logic, rooted in American political ideology since the emergence of the Monroe Doctrine in the 19th century.

Given the interest in reestablishing the United States as a leading player in the international system, while Trump is portrayed as the “President of Peace” in the cited document, the peace fostered by his strategic plan is limited by definition. This is due to the principle of “Peace through Strength,” established by the government as the best possible form of deterrence against potential threats. Furthermore, Trump’s criticism of international institutions favors the strengthened sovereignty of the state, contributes to the perpetuation of an individualistic logic in the construction of his strategies, and prevents the participation of other actors who might hinder his gains in the process.

In this sense, U.S. initiatives reinforce the central role of the energy agenda as an indispensable means of ensuring economic security, given that, according to official strategy, “the United States must never depend on any external power for the supply of essential components.” Based on this principle, dominance in the energy sector implies multiple benefits for the U.S. economy in the current scenario, since, in addition to creating jobs and reducing costs for American consumers and businesses, it serves as fuel to drive the country’s domestic reindustrialization project—also defined as one of the administration’s strategic priorities—and helps maintain advantages in the technological landscape associated with AI development.

The effect of these strategies, made possible by wars, is therefore not merely a matter of chance, but a direct result of an integrated approach aimed at protecting U.S. interests, which reinforces power and control over the Western Hemisphere by encouraging national and regional governments aligned with its principles and discouraging its partners from collaborating with other LNG and oil-supplying countries. This is because exclusivity avoids disadvantage by creating a less competitive energy market, which explains the gradual elimination of competitors through conflicts—such as the war in Ukraine, which took Russia out of the game, or even the war in Iran, which, in addition to harming Qatar as the world’s second-largest energy supplier, strengthened ties between Israel and the U.S.

Furthermore, the commitment to “lead from a position of strength” has produced enormous civilian and military costs in Gaza, revealing the contradictions inherent in Trump’s self-definition as the “President of Peace,” who uses the rhetoric of building “New Gaza” as a triumphant model for regional pacification, merely to conceal the true interest at stake in the Israel-Palestine conflict: energy. Thus, the private sector, as evidenced by Chevron’s participation in investment in Gaza, plays a crucial role in financing this type of initiative, acting as an accomplice to an ongoing “piracy” by the U.S. government.

When examining the list of priorities defined by the U.S. regarding strategic relations with Europe, an incompatibility with the current action plan becomes apparent. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, carried out by the United States as a means of shifting European gas consumption toward American suppliers, prevents the effective restoration of stability in Europe and strategic stability in Russia. Both sides have been harmed by the Ukraine war, as Russia has lost consumer markets to the U.S., while Europe has had to accept more expensive energy imports due to the shortages caused by the war.

Thus, the ultimate priority of the US cannot be reduced to the idea that it depends strictly on gas and oil from the Indo-Pacific region, given that it currently leads in the production and supply of these energy sources to the entire world. The scheme currently being developed now reveals the need to maintain economic hegemony, particularly in the energy sector, in order to guarantee the security and economic interests of this country.