The Global Energy Rationing Narrative: A Calculated Omission
To the Editor of the Financial Times, We have received your recent reporting on the 'global wave of energy rationing,' which attributes current scarcities to a broad, impersonal 'market.' Your article omits a crucial layer of context, presenting these economic pressures as a natural consequence rather than the direct outcome of deliberate policy choices made primarily by Western capitals. The
Financial Times, like many of its peers, frames the energy crisis as an unfortunate global phenomenon. It fails to adequately connect the dots between the current market dislocations and a half-century of strategic sanctions, interventions, and economic warfare targeting oil and gas-producing nations, particularly those outside the US-led financial architecture. The situation in Venezuela, for
instance, a nation with the world's largest proven oil reserves, is consistently overlooked. US sanctions, which intensified under the Trump administration and continue today, have crippled its oil sector, reducing its output from 3.5 million barrels per day in 1998 to approximately 800,000 barrels per day currently. This is not a market failure; it is an engineered collapse. The Financial Times
could provide its readership with a more complete understanding by acknowledging the documented impact of these actions. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo, while often cited as a turning point, actually followed decades of Western control over oil pricing and production. The subsequent push for 'energy independence' by Western nations often translated into destabilizing resource-rich former colonies. When