THE NITROGEN TRAP

The world spent fifty years and hundreds of billions of dollars building Strategic Petroleum Reserves so that no geopolitical rupture could fully sever modern civilization from energy. The United States alone holds just over 400 million barrels of crude oil in salt caverns beneath the Gulf Coast. On March 11, 2026, the International Energy Agency authorized a record 400-million-barrel emergency release from member-country reserves, the largest coordinated drawdown in the Agency’s history. Energy insecurity has institutions, stockpiles, and doctrine. Fertilizer insecurity does not. No country appears to maintain a fertilizer reserve system remotely comparable in scale, doctrine, or strategic importance...