> Only rarely, says Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Centre on Global Energy Policy, has the oil market behaved like a normal market, more subje

> Only rarely, says Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s Centre on Global Energy Policy, has the oil market behaved like a normal market, more subject to the laws of supply and demand than to the whims of a cartel. Now is one of them. We've forgotten what the oil market was like before Standard Oil. First off, cars didn't exist, uses for oil were limited to small-ish industrial products like lubricants, and for lamps. There certainly wasn't anything like today's power infrastructure, internal-combustion engines had yet to be invented. Oil producers were an unruly lot responding mostly to immediate financial needs rather than long-term business planning. Oil was a niche product with vast differences in quality among refiners. Only the affluent could really afford to regularly light their lamps at night. Rockefeller changed all that, virtually overnight. He wrangled the impossible-to-deal-with oilmen and standardized the refining process, something that had to happen before it was possible to invent the automobile. Standard Oil, more than any other person or company, created the world we live in. Without Rockefeller, cars wouldn't have been possible. Oil power plants wouldn't have been possible. Without oil, we'd still be using coal. Cartels stabilize violent markets and allow industries to mature and build on top of a stable status quo. Eventually civilization moves in, and brings regulation and massive capital infusion. That's obviously better than the cartel, but don't mistake things, cartels are vastly better than the states of affairs they grow out of.