The Changing Geopolitics of Oil

Abstract

This chapter discusses the civil service managed to maintain Saudi Aramco's financial independence. It discusses the ability to maintain oil and gas fields, provide stability to production, uses “best practices” for exploration, exploitation, refining, and export of oil and gas. Russia is the largest world producer of oil, and its National Oil Companies (NOCs) are very large and quite sophisticated. Hence, their motivation in dealing with the International Oil Companies (IOCs) is either to gain technology, which they will then use on their own, or to gain access to distribution of their exports of gas and oil. In these two areas, politics tend to dominate. The responsible for supplying enough oil and oil products to the country to manage its enormous growth with declining local oil reserves. The central Iraqi oil company State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), suffered a great deal under Saddam Hussein's rule, but managed to maintain a minimum amount of production.