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石油可以作为能源以及制造塑料和化肥的原材料，而且只有极少数商品已变得至关重要，石油已成为地缘政治对抗的对象，作为具有战略重要性的商品。在此期间，一些地缘政治事件与石油密切相关，或对石油价格和供应产生影响。英国海军1912号决定，由于速度和射程的优势，将军舰由煤改为石油推进，这是导致石油地缘政治重要性的第一件大事。大不列颠将盎格鲁-波斯石油公司收归国有，并致力于保护波斯的这一资源。自1934以来，该国被称为伊朗，因为该国根本没有石油资源。
一开始，美利坚合众国做了总开发的60%，但到了1990，欠发达国家接管了；近东给了26%，俄罗斯21%了，北美国只占整个开发的17%。世界上已知的8个国家中，有80%是已知的和可开采的石油资源：沙特阿拉伯、伊拉克、阿拉伯联合酋长国、科威特、伊朗、委内瑞拉、俄罗斯和墨西哥。
Historical background
Petroleum
In the beginning of the XX. century carbohydrates became more and more important in the world because they were pure, easily manageable, cheap, have huge energy capacity and were available in big amounts all over the world.
Petroleum can be used as a source of energy as well as a raw material in the manufacturing of plastics and fertilizers, and only very few commodities have become as vital as it, and petroleum has been the object of geopolitical confrontations as a commodity of strategic importance. At that period several geopolitical events were closely related to oil or had consequences on oil prices and supply. The decision in 1912 by the British Admiralty to convert warships from coal to oil propulsion because of speed and range advantages was the first event that led to the geopolitical importance of oil. Great Britain nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and committed itself to the protection of this resource in Persia - since 1934 the country is called Iran - because the country had no oil resources at all.
In the beginning the United States of America did the 60% of the total exploitation, but by 1990 the undeveloped countries took over it; the Near East gave 26%, Russia 21% and North America only 17% of the whole exploitation. 80% of the known and exploitable oil resources were found in 8 countries in the world: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and Mexico.
The first oil crisis was only a local crisis; it had no significant effect on the world market. It took place in Iran, because Mohammad Mossadeq, the prime minister of Iran, nationalized the oil companies, so English professionals went home and the country went bankrupt in 3 years.
Then began the Suez crisis in 1956 when Nasser nationalized the canal. In the 50es annually 210-220 thousands of tons of cargo went through the canal and the 2/3 of it was petroleum that had to be transported to Western Europe. But after the arab-israeli war blow-up, Nasser made the canal totally unusable. As the canal had a great significance, it caused some outstanding problems - provisional petroleum shortage evolved in Western Europe, so consumption was decreased, higher taxes were levied on petrol, and petrol coupons were introduced.
Simultaneously Syria closed the petroleum lines in the Iranian areas and Saudi Arabia introduced embargo towards Great Britain and France.
By 1957 the crisis came to an end, 90% of the petroleum export that was not transported was compensated, and at that time petroleum utilization was not so important (1956 only approximately 20% of Europe's energy use) and there were no considerable changes in the prices.
World War I demonstrated the increasing importance of the internal combustion engine on modern military operations, such as planes, trucks and tanks. In the 1920s motorization - automobile - was becoming an important mode of transportation and these years were characterized by exploding civilian demand for oil. At the same time a few primal corporations -that became the oil giants of today - started to control the industry quickly. The oligopolistic commercial control on the price and the production of oil was in 1928 by the Achnacarry Agreements first established between the greatest oil multinationals of the time: the 'Seven Sisters'.
Seven Sisters of the petroleum industry
The term 'Seven Sisters' refers to seven huge oil companies that dominated - since Rockefeller's first gigantic monopoly - the mid 20th century oil production, refining and distribution.
Five of them were American and the two other were British. The American companies included Exxon, Mobil, and Socal which later became Chevron, Gulf and Texaco. The British companies were Royal Dutch Shell (it was a joint venture with the Netherlands) and British Petroleum (BP), whose interest in world oil expanded with the discovery of oil fields in Iraq and in Indonesia. Later through acquisitions and mergers the 'Seven Sisters' have become four enormous oil companies; ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Chevron-Texaco.
These corporations have invested a lot in extraction infrastructures, particularly in the Middle-East and Latin-America. They were effectively in control of the oil supply and demand of the world with a set of strategies, such as fixing production, prices and quotas. However, in several developing countries a nationalization trend started to emerge, slowly leading to the future oil supply control and shocks. In 1938 Mexico vigorously took control of its entire oil industry by expropriations, undermining its accessibility to foreign markets for a while, but generating sympathy in a lot of developing countries as a symbol against foreign exploitation of national resources.
World War II. revealed to be a conflict that was strategically dominated by oil because the key weapons were air and armored forces. In 1941 the United States decided to establish an oil embargo on Japan, this was one event that triggered the war in the Pacific. The strategic objectives of Japan were to secure the resources of Southeast Asia, mainly the Indonesian oil fields, and the country has planned fast operations in order to achieve these objectives. The same year, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union had the securing of the oil fields in the Caucasus region among its primal objectives, but both Germany and Japan failed to establish a secure source of oil, in 1945 that contributed to their overthrow by strategically more mobile allied forces. About 86% of the world's oil supply was controlled by the allied nations.
The increasing geopolitical importance of the Middle-East was underlined by the post World War II. era, as from that region the United States and Europe were importing growing quantities of oil. In1948 in Saudi Arabia a new source of oil was discovered, called Ghawar Field, that accounted for the largest conventional oil field in the world; more oil reserves were discovered in this region, so the supply was shifting rapidly. They were trying many times to integrate countries like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in alliances with Western powers, but a series of geopolitical events, just like the creation of the OPEC and Islamic nationalisms, would complicate access to oil resources.
The OPEC
The western Seven Sisters wanted to achieve a powerful economic control of oil production, so many producing countries - most of them were from the Middle-East - had a common goal: to gather a bigger share of the oil incomes by controlling supply.
In 1960 an organization called 'Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' (OPEC) was founded at the Baghdad Conference. It contained five founding members: Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, but by the end of 1971, six other nations had joined the group, they were the following countries: Qatar, Indonesia, Libya, United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Nigeria. They also wanted to maintain the oil prices. In 1968 the Arab countries founded the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Throughout the post World War II period exporting countries found increasing demand for their crude oil but there was a 40% decline in the purchasing power of a barrel of oil. The balance of power shifted in March 1971. And this month the Texas Railroad Commission set proration at 100 percent for the first time which meant that Texas producers were no longer limited in the volume of oil that they could produce. It meant - more significantly - that the power to control crude oil prices shifted from the United States - Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana - to the OPEC. There was no more spare capacity in the United States and as a consequence no tool to put an upper limit on prices. A little over two years later OPEC - through the unintended consequence of war - achieved a glimpse of the extent of its power to influence prices.
The OPEC was unable to increase oil prices until the beginning of the 1970s. The major reasons were the importance of production in non-member countries and there OPEC members had some difficulties to agree on a common policy, since economic theory clearly underlines that cartels are bound to fail at fixing prices. Accordingly, developed countries were confident: the price of petroleum would remain relatively stable. In the early 1970s it was predicted by the American Government that by 1980 oil prices might rise to about 5 dollars per barrel. So the petroleum prices were very low and the economic growth was strong but this situation changed quickly. |
