This is a modified version of a paper introducing the seminar on the international petroleum industry held in the spring of 1974 under the auspices of the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Centre of International and Area Studies, University of London.
2.
James E. Akins, then Director of the Office of Fuels and Energy, US Department of State has reported that the " main reason " the American Government was unprepared to refuse the Libyan demands in 1970 and " dare the Libyans to nationalise " was that it would have meant a drastic drawing down of European oil reserves, which the European governments would not have allowed to happen "especially as the goal would apparently have been only to protect the Anglo-Saxon oil monopoly, which they had long sought to break. To have tried to explain to them that they would themselves suffer in the long run, would have been less than futile. We in the State Department had no doubt whatever at that time, and for those particular reasons, that the Europeans would have made their own deals with the Libyans; that they would have paid the higher taxes Libya demanded and that the Anglo-Saxon oil companies' sojourn in Libya would have ended." (Italics added) James E. Akins, " The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf is Here" Foreign Affairs, April 1973. It might be pointed out here that it has often been recognised that higher prices would hurt Europe much more than the US and if the Task Force predictions had been correct, high oil prices abroad at that time would have had very little effect on the US and might have served primarily to augment oil company profits.
3.
Ibid.
4.
Since this paper was written Petroleum Intelligence Weekly has published the detailed chronology of the negotiations since 1971 in the Middle East and Libya outlined by G. Henry M. Schuler, a representative of Nelson Bunker Hunt, one of the independent companies in Libya which was nationalised by the Libyan Government. See PIW Supplement, April 22, 1974.
5.
It should be noted that if the major companies obtain oil through contracts in which they agree to " buy back " government-owned oil in order to provide arrangements at present) this will provide a powerful force helping to maintain a high price for oil.
