Between 1975 and 1983, Guatemala's hydrocarbon development became deeply entangled with state-led violence during the country's civil war. The United States' efforts to secure favorable access to Guatemalan oil intersected with-and in some cases redirected-the trajectory of U.S. foreign assistance and human rights policy.

In the first book on U.S.-Guatemalan hydrocarbon relations, Richard M. Balzano exposes the arms-for-aid diplomacy and duplicity in the Reagan administration, who actively supported the Guatemalan government as they inflicted violence on their own citizens. US-Guatemalan Petro-Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century makes several original contributions to the existing scholarship on Guatemalan energy development and inter-American resource imperialism. Balzano challenges the notion that Guatemala was a peripheral concern in Reagan's Cold War strategy in Central America, arguing instead that it played a pivotal role in shaping U.S. regional policy.