Oil Companies and Governments: International Reaction to the Nationalization of the Petroleum Industry in Spain: 1927-1930

Abstract

In his recent book Oil Companies in the International System, Louis Turner takes a critical 'look at the myths that have built up around the relationship between national governments and oil companies'.' Working with only a 'patchy' historical record, Turner concludes that multinational petroleum companies have not been able to influence the policies of either their host or parent governments to any significant degree. Parent governments in particular have not let the demands of the companies determine their policies, and although there have been periods when these governments did pay considerable attention to the petroleum industry, this has been the result of shifts in the international power balance and not of the political weight of the multinationals.2 Turner's book represents a revision of the work of previous students of the oil industry, such as John M. Blair and Robert Engler,3 who have portrayed the oil companies as powerful institutions fully capable of getting their way with anyone. Turner directs his book against the hagiographers of the industry as well as against its demonologists, but it is against the latter that the book is primarily aimed. As he stated elsewhere, 'what the radicals do not provide is the broad historical analysis which allows us to sort out the mythology surrounding corporate power from the reality'.4 This study of the reaction of the multinational oil companies to the nationalization of the petroleum industry in Spain, which was undertaken in full expectation of verifying 'the myth surrounding