The Energy Crisis and the Less-Developed Countries

Abstract

Petroleum consumption and import requirments of the less-developed regions of the world are only a fraction of those of the major industrialized nations. This situation is but a reflection of the close association in our age between the stage of economic development and the level of petroleum consumption. The recent dramatic reversal of the international energy-petroleum situation has caught most less-developed countries still at the beginning of the development process involving transformation of their economic structures. The change, therefore, promises to have an even greater impact on their future economic development course and the energy-petroleum erequirements than on the already industrialized countries with well-estabilished patterns of production and energy consumptoin. We will review the energy-petroleum position and perspectives of the less-developed countries in Asia, Latin America (including Caribbean Area), Africa and the Middle East, with the exception of a few major oil producing and exporting countries, members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).