OPEC'S relevance will slowly decline over the next two decades as the global transition from fossil fuels continues to accelerate and oil's dominance in the transportation sector is diminished by alternatives, including electric vehicles and potentially hydrogen, resulting in a more turbulent oil market. Previous prognostications about OPEC's decline have long proved inaccurate, with the cartel of oil producers having withstood a number of crises since its 1960 founding. These have included the oil embargoes of the 1970s, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the 21st-century rise of U.S. shale oil. But this time is different. None of the previous crises represented a fundamental shift in the energy sector that effectively removed the uniqueness of petroleum as a transportation fuel.