World mineral & energy resources

Story hook

1859. A retired railway conductor named Edwin Drake sinks a 21-metre hole into a hillside at Titusville, Pennsylvania, hoping to find oil he can sell as lamp-fuel. He hits crude. Within 5 years, Pennsylvania produces half the world's oil. Within 50 years, John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil is the world's first business behemoth. Within 100 years, two World Wars + the Cold War + the Iraq Wars have been fought over who controls the next Drake well.

1973. OPEC turns off the tap. Oil prices quadruple overnight. The world enters the first energy crisis — and discovers that a few barrels of crude can collapse a developed economy in 6 months. Stagflation, recession, fall of post-war Bretton Woods.

2025. The world produces 101 million barrels of oil a day, 8 billion tonnes of coal a year, and is in the middle of the biggest energy transition since the Industrial Revolution — toward solar (cheapest electricity in history), wind, batteries (Li + Co + Ni from a handful of countries), and nuclear. Critical minerals — once a footnote — have become the new geopolitical pivot. Whoever controls lithium triangle (Chile + Bolivia + Argentina), cobalt belt (DRC), and rare-earth processing (China holds 90%) holds the EV century by the throat.

Mineral and energy geography is, in the most literal sense, the geography of power.

Why this matters for UPSC

Syllabus location: GS-I — World Economic Geography (mineral + energy resources, global distribution). GS-III — Energy security, critical minerals. Asked 4-5 times in Prelims over the last decade — country- resource pairings, OPEC, REEs. Mains regular topic (2019 oil geopolitics, 2022 critical minerals). Very high contemporary salience.