The Quest for a New Relationship in the World of Oil

Abstract

The developments in the oil world in the last decade, by altering the very pattern and tenor of international economic development, may well mark a turning point in history. The consequences of the actions of a handful of oil producers, who chose to consciously intervene in the ongoing historical process, promise to be both profound and long-term. In the course of their struggle for an existence of dignity based on more equitable transactions of international economic power, the oil producers discovered the real economic relations that characterize the oil world. They saw, too, an unbroken continuity in the oil policy of the Western industrialized countries. It is the same policy which caused the denudation of their only resource, oil, and which is now casting a dark shadow over the North-South relations. The author argues that the West had fashioned a potent political weapon in the economics of oil; the flow of oil had been harnessed to promote political causes. After this weapon changed hands in 1973, the strategy of the West appears to be to use a variety of economic tools, such as currency depreciation and international inflation, to restore the status quo ante. The paper also endeavours to show (a) the lack of any sincere interest on the part of the West in the development of the oil-producing countries; and (b) the potentially serious consequences of unscrupulous Western speculation in this vital commodity and of an irrationally reckless exploitation of oil fields under the control of foreign oil companies. In an examination of the West's all-too-obvious faith in the efficacy of politics of confrontation, and of its demonstrated obduracy in defence of a life-style generated by possibly the most energy-intensive economic machinery ever, the paper throws into sharp relief the daunting task that architects of an alternative world order face.