When Oil Prices Went Haywire, Jamaica Broke #oilcrisis #history

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Suddenly, every country that depended on imported oil was exposed.

[00:00:05]Jamaica didn't just feel it.

[00:00:08]It absorbed the full force. Its oil import bill jumped by over 170% in a single year.

[00:00:16]That meant something very simple, but very dangerous. Every extra dollar spent on oil was a dollar taken away from everything else.

[00:00:26]The collapse inside Jamaica.

[00:00:29]The effect was immediate and brutal.

[00:00:33]Foreign exchange reserves began to drain fast.

[00:00:37]The country needed more money just to buy the same fuel.

[00:00:41]But it wasn't earning enough extra to keep up.

[00:00:44]Then came the deeper problem.

[00:00:46]One that most people still don't talk about.

[00:00:49]Jamaica's most important industry, [music] bauxite, depended heavily on oil.

[00:00:55]Refining bauxite into alumina required intense heat, powered by fuel. And that system had been designed when oil was cheap. Now, oil wasn't cheap anymore.