U.S. Energy Information Administration (2017) "Over the past few decades Vietnam has emerged as an important oil and natural gas producer in Southeast Asia."
https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/VNM
Statista "Oil production in Vietnam from 2009 to 2019"
https://www.statista.com/statistics/608982/oil-production-in-vietnam/
Ken Burns' "The Vietnam War" started off on the wrong foot, claiming we became involved with the "best of intentions" ...BS.
"It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected Premier." - Dwight Eisenhower (1963) whose US occupation forces blocked the national election scheduled to take place within 2 years of the end of the Geneva peace talks. Instead, the US brought Diem over from Michigan State to head a new SV government (just as they brought Unocal oilman Hamid Karzai over to head a new Afghan government). Ken Burns did not describe any of this, nor did he show the map of oil concessions granted by SV to Big Oil companies, dividing up the South China Sea, hoping for big finds like Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia immediately south. Those maps published in the '60s have become hard to find. Note, Big Oilman, David H. Koch was a major donor for this documentary, along with BofA.
(Ken Burns did reveal, however, that Nixon committed treason while candidate for President, by conspiring with the govt of SV for them to boycott Paris peace talks, to prolong the war and throw the US election his way. Burns also showed Kissinger's key role in this.)
There was once much excitement about huge oil finds off the coast of Indonesia, by Royal Dutch Shell, and what that implied for our allies in SE Asia. Maps were published of giant exploratory concessions, cutting up the South China Sea into big pie-wedges, from the gummint of South Vietnam to all the usuals, Standard Oil of..., ...Shell, etc. Now, our corporate media seem to find all that inconvenient so it's next to impossible to find those articles and maps, sort of like the way all copies of "Bedtime for Bonzo" disappeared when Reagan was running for Pres. Nonetheless, Vietnam, all by itself, is now the 3rd largest oil producer in SE Asia, and China continues to build a chain of artificial islands relentless marching south into the South China Sea. They want that oil.
Incidental reading…
Barry Weisberg, "Southeast Asian Resources the Oil beneath Indochina", The Harvard Crimson, March 17, 1971.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1971/3/17/southeast-asian-resources-the-oil-beneath/
"Today there are derricks pumping that oil." - Monty Heying, former Halliburton exec, "Did we go to war in Vietnam over oil?" http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_we_go_to_war_in_Vietnam_over_oil
Vietnam was a resource war. US knew there was oil in Vietnam. - a blog with useful links, including to one by Louis Wessling, (Pres. of Shell Oil in Vietnam, Dutch born, member USAF) - http://www.masterjules.net/oilnam.htm from Louis Wessling, Fuelling the War: Revealing an Oil Company’s Role in Vietnam (London: I.B. Taurus, 2000)
BTW...
Shell sold oil indirectly to North Vietnam, during the war. - Louis Wesseling (2000) Fuelling The War: Revealing An Oil Company's Role In Vietnam, I.B.Taurus & Co., London & NY.
Of course Iraq, which sits on a sea of oil, in the Middle East second only to Saudi Arabia,[1] was an oil war, and Afghanistan's recent president Hamid Karzai once worked for Unocal to get a huge US oil pipeline through Afghanistan[2]. That failed, so we made him President. All this continues.[3]
1. Iraq had the third largest reserves of conventional oil in the world. - Country Analysis Briefs (2007) US Energy Information Administration, and Gal Luft (2003) "How Much Oil Does Iraq Have?" The Brookings Institution. (perhaps no longer the case, but illustrative of US thinking at the time)
2. "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." - Dick Cheney, 1998, when Hamid Karzai, working for Unocal, was negotiating with the Taliban for an oil pipeline from the Caspian through Afghanistan. Henry Kissinger also worked for Unocal. A.F.Sec. under GHW Bush, Donald Rice, was on Unocal's board of directors. Unocal has since merged with Chevron/Texaco. Of course, after 9/11 the US installed Hamid Karzai as President of Afghanistan.
3. Is America Willing to Launch World War III to Beat Putin for Oil Pipelines?
A new study suggests U.S. and Russian antagonism could spark a global nuclear conflict between the two superpowers.
https://www.alternet.org/world/america-willing-launch-world-war-iii-beat-putin-oil-pipelines?
Addendum…
"The fundamental lesson is, [we must] help people who are willing to risk their own lives to help themselves and who have the genuine nationalist support of their own people," he said. "And the tragedy of Vietnam is, we chose the wrong side. Almost the most important thing in the Pentagon Papers is that Truman was told that Ho Chi Minh was the legitimate leader of Vietnam." - Josh Rogin, quoting Morton Halperin, "A Washington foreign policy legend issues a dire warning." WaPo, 10/6/22. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/morton-halperin-warning-electoral-autocrats-democracy/