Top 35 Daniel Yergin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The Western world, he believed, was afflicted by the curse of short-term thinking, the inevitable result of democracy.”

— Daniel Yergin

2. “The starting point for energy security today as it has always been is diversification of supplies and sources.”

— Daniel Yergin

3. “A wise old owl lived in an oak, The more he saw the less he spoke, The less he spoke, the more he heard, Why aren’t we all like that old bird?”

— Daniel Yergin

4. “This has a lot to do with the unrest in Nigeria, but also with the production loss after the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, the decline in Iraq since the 2003 war, and the decline in Venezuelan output since 2002.”

— Daniel Yergin

5. “The Iranians know they hold high cards because of oil.”

— Daniel Yergin

6. “Mastery itself was the prize of the venture.”1.”

— Daniel Yergin

7. “To meet the energy challenge requires the most important energy of all – human creativity. That’s the real prize.”

— Daniel Yergin

8. “In a world of increasing interdependence, energy security will depend much on how countries manage their relations with one another. That is why energy security will be one of the main challenges of foreign policy in the years ahead. Oil and gas have always been political commodities.”

— Daniel Yergin

9. “First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is very much focused on the dependence on imported natural gas.”

— Daniel Yergin

10. “So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology.”

— Daniel Yergin

11. “The United States generates less than 1 percent of the plastic waste in oceans. About 90 percent of river-sourced plastic pollution in the oceans comes from uncontrolled dumping into ten rivers in Asia and Africa, which, if properly managed, could dramatically reduce the wastage. Plastic bags and straws may be the most visible use of plastics, but they constitute less than 2 percent of plastics.”

— Daniel Yergin

12. “Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of oil.”

— Daniel Yergin

13. “People always underestimate the impact of technology. To give you an example: In the 1970s the frontier for offshore development was 200 meters, today it is 4,000 meters.”

— Daniel Yergin

14. “The battlefields of World War I established the importance of petroleum as an element of national power when the internal combustion machine overtook the horse and the coal-powered locomotive.”

— Daniel Yergin

15. “We are living in a new age of energy supply anxiety.”

— Daniel Yergin

16. “It’s extraordinary how inventive one can be with ethanol right now.”

— Daniel Yergin

17. “Ride hailing does not necessarily mean few total miles driven. On the contrary, it can well mean increased mileage driven, as the accessibility and convenience stimulate more usage of vehicles – fewer people taking the bus or the subway and more people in individual cars, albeit driven by someone else.”

— Daniel Yergin

18. “The first energy transition began in Britain in the thirteenth century with the shift from wood to coal. Rising populations and destruction of forests made wood scarce and expensive, and coal came to be used for heating in London, despite fumes and smell.”

— Daniel Yergin

19. “In a couple of years, the Chinese will be seen as regular participants in international industry. Their companies have to report to shareholders as well as to the Chinese authorities. They need to make money, they have to be efficient.”

— Daniel Yergin

20. “We experienced similiar fears in the 1880s, at the end of World War I and II. And we ran out in the 1970s.”

— Daniel Yergin

21. “The world has produced about 1 trillion barrels of oil since the start of the industry in the nineteenth century. Currently, it is thought that there are at least 5 trillion barrels of petroleum resources, of which 1.4 trillion is sufficiently developed and technically and economically accessible.”

— Daniel Yergin

22. “A premium in the oil price of somewhere between 10 to 15 dollars a barrel reflects this heightened anxiety.”

— Daniel Yergin

23. “So often, over the history of the oil industry, it is said that technology has gone about as far as it can and that the “end of the road” for the oil industry is in sight. And then, new innovations dramatically expand capabilities. This pattern would be repeated again and again.”

— Daniel Yergin

24. “But that’s not enough: To maintain energy security, one needs a supply system that provides a buffer against shocks. It needs large, flexible markets. And it’s important to acknowledge the fact that the entire energy supply chain needs to be protected.”

— Daniel Yergin

25. “Even Silicon Valley investors have put well over a $1 billion in new energy technologies.”

— Daniel Yergin

26. “Simplicity rules everything worth while, and whenever I have been up against a business proposition which, after taking thought, I could not reduce to simplicity, I have realized that it was hopelessly wrong and I have let it alone.”

— Daniel Yergin

27. “I think the producers, for the most part, don’t want to see prices skyrocket because that will only create problems for them down the road and would also be a, you know, would be a very serious shock for a world economy that can’t afford serious shocks right now.”

— Daniel Yergin

28. “But the key thing is that Iraq, while it’s got very large oil reserves, has marginalized itself as an oil exporter and these days its exports are only about one tenth that of neighboring Saudi Arabia.”

— Daniel Yergin

29. “Clearly, the Chinese need the resources, but I don’t think they want to clash with the industrial world which happens to be the market for their goods.”

— Daniel Yergin

30. “The North Sea was supposed to run out in the 1980s. Then in the 1990s. And now production is still on-line.”

— Daniel Yergin

31. “Once upon a time, automobiles were central to romantic life. It was once estimated that almost 40 percent of marriages in America were proposed in automobiles. Today, a third of marriages result from meeting up online and through dating apps.”

— Daniel Yergin

32. “We have got to find a a new plan of attacking it. Something that will show clearly not only the magnitude of the industries and commercial developments, and the changes they have brought in various parts of the country, but something which will make clear the great principles by which industrial leaders are combining and controlling these resources.”

— Daniel Yergin

33. “According to one study by the United States Geological survey, 86 percent of oil reserves in the United States are the result not of what is estimated at the time of discovery but of the revisions and additions that come with further development.”

— Daniel Yergin

34. “What, then, is the future of the $5 trillion global oil and gas industry that supplies almost 60 percent of world energy? The industry will continue to need to find and develop another three to five billion barrels a year just to make up for the natural decline in oil fields, which happens after a field has been in production for some time. The International Energy Agency estimates that over $20 trillion of investment in oil and gas development will be required over the next two decades.”

— Daniel Yergin

35. “The bulk of extra supplies that could be put into the market come from two places. One, they come from other Persian Gulf suppliers, of which Saudi Arabia is at the top of the list.”

— Daniel Yergin

36. “In August 2018, Yamal LNG dispatched its first cargo to China, going east along the Arctic coast, through the ice of the Northern Sea Route. Yamal LNG had come in on time and on budget. The Financial Times observed another noteworthy aspect of the project. “No other business venture,” it said, “better illustrates Russia’s resilience in the face of international sanctions.”

— Daniel Yergin