The collapse of the petrochemical industry was one of the major driving factors behind the economic chaos and social upheaval of the to mid-21st century. Of course, the petrochemical industry was a house of cards that was bound to blow over sooner or later. Peak oil combined with the increasingly obvious effects of climate change made its position more and more untenable. The industry's escalating level of denial was brought home by its increasingly risky efforts to find new reserves and the string of public relations disasters that ensued – culminating in the notorious Arctic Queen disaster of 2046. A complete ban on Arctic and Antarctic oil and mineral exploration swiftly followed, and was further reinforced by more and more punitive legislation from individual countries in subsequent years, such as prohibitions on tar sand and shale gas exploitation. However, the real death blow to the industry came as more and more government subsidies were reduced or removed. The massive levels of over a trillion US dollars per year globally that the oil industry received in the 2000s was all but gone by 2060. On the flip-side, humanity's demand for petrochemical products, although diminished, was certainly not eliminated. The need for new sources for fuel, plastics and other derived chemicals gave a massive boost to the nascent nanochemical industry. Nowadays, through a combination of tailored micro-organisms and nanites, with modified algae strains to provide the raw material, almost any chemical compound or mixture can be synthesised – often, but not always, more cheaply than drilling, transporting and refining crude oil. Better results can also often be achieved, the most obvious example being fuels that burn more cleanly and efficiently than their old-fashioned brethren.