The crisis in US-Saudi relations triggered by the state sponsored murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi might seem unrelated to Venezuela’s current turmoil.

Commentary on both crises has of course noted the centrality of oil. Whereas Venezuela’s civil conflict allegedly stems from mismanaged oil revenues, the Khashoggi crisis is represented as a consequence of Washington’s tragic “oil for security” deal with Saudi Arabia, the idea that the US reluctantly but imperatively protects the region’s oil and, in return, the Saudis buy US weapons to keep thousands of defense workers employed.

In many ways, however, both of these crises are related to a greater crisis, the growing crisis of oil’s “overabundance.” As such, these crises call into question the possible collapse of political and economic arrangements created in the 1970s that have been disrupted by a recent technological revolution in US oil extraction. For four decades, hyper-militarization and permanent war in the Middle East and North Africa were the primary conditions that allowed wealth and power to be extracted from oil. These means — oil-for-insecurity — no longer appear to be working.