In 1960, OPEC was founded in Baghdad by Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela,[9] as a cartel to fix the price of oil on the world market.[10] In 1973 OPEC imposed an embargo on the United States and other countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, including Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa.[11]
In 2017, the United States pressured China and other members of the United Nations Security Council to end oil shipments to North Korea in an effort to stop them from continuing their ICBM programme.[12][13][14] In 2024 the United States and South Korea established a task force to block North Korea from acquiring oil.[15]
In December 2024, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, accused Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia of opening "a second front" against Ukraine on Putin's orders, in response to Robert Fico's threats to cut off electricity from Slovakia to Ukraine.[17][18][19] Robert Fico threatened to cut off energy supplies after Ukraine refused to renew the deal with Russia regarding transport of gas to European Union countries through Ukrainian territory.[20]
In January 2025, the Moldovan government accused Russia of blackmail in regards to gas supplies to the unrecognized breakaway state of Transnistria in its territory, arguing that Russia sought to provoke an energy crisis that would undermine Moldova's pro-Western policies at the time of the 2025 Moldovan parliamentary election later that year. Russia denied the allegations.[21][22]
^Bryjka, Filip (12 May 2023). "How the War in Ukraine Impacts NATO Policy in the Black Sea Region". PISM Bulletin. 57 (2176). Polish Institute of International Affairs: 1. Through hybrid methods, Russia is destabilising the internal situation in Moldova where it uses energy blackmail, disinformation, and financing of protests to undermine the pro-European Action and Solidarity Party (PAS) government and replace it with the pro-Russian Şor Party.
^Shelest, Hanna (13 December 2015). "Hybrid War & the Eastern Partnership: Waiting for a Correlation"(PDF). Turkish Policy Quarterly. Vol. 14, no. 3. p. 46. This pressure in the form of trade wars, energy blackmail, discreditable propaganda, diplomatic deceit, and coercion to join alternative regional integration projects has been felt by almost all Eastern Partnership states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine).
^Ekmanis, Indra (28 October 2024). "Contesting Russia: The Baltic Perspective". Baltic Bulletin. Eurasia Program. Foreign Policy Research Institute. The Baltic states, in turn, have responded by turning areas of risk into areas of expertise: for example, [...] on Energy Security in Lithuania (2012), where previous dependency on Russia left the country vulnerable to energy blackmail;
^Blank, Stephen (27 August 2013). "Russia Pressures Armenia to Join Customs Union". The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst. Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. Moscow's two abiding goals are to integrate the entire post-Soviet space under its domination and as part of that larger multi-dimensional process, ensure that it is the only security manager in the Caucasus. Not only is it now using energy blackmail against Armenia; [...]
