With not only roughly two-thirds of the world’s remaining oil, but also the easiest and cheapest to get at, with the highest EROEI, any major disruption instantly throws the world into hard times and a die-off if nations don’t share the remaining oil supplies.

Pipelines are easy targets because they’re too long to entirely protect, and in the Middle East, sandstorms provide cover for sabotage.

List of 469 Attacks on Iraqi pipelines, oil installations, and oil personnel from 2003 to 2008

But the biggest threats are destruction of oil refineries and other oil infrastructure, or a blockade of the straits of Hormuz.

The problem for governments for all disruptions like this is that citizens assume corruption or incompetence is holding back supplies and create tremendous civil unrest, or nations go to war, and even more infrastructure is destroyed, accelerating crises beyond what harm they may have caused on their own.