How are the Oil Companies Reacting to Oil Depletion?
At the end of the war, the industry set off again in the post war epoch and it was dominated by the seven international oil companies, Shell, Anglo-Dutch, BP – British, and Exxon, Mobil, Gulf, Chevron, Texaco. These were the international oil companies who basically controlled the supply of oil from the wellhead in the Middle East, through the tankers, through the refineries, eventually to the forecourt. It was a good system. They could plan, long term planning. It was a highly centralized organization – really, in a way an extension of wartime central planning with almost a military kind of style. Then it started in 1951 when the fall of the Shah, problems in domestic politics in Iran and Iran expropriated the local subsidiary of BP which had an exclusive concession in Iran since 1906. This was a fairly devastating result for BP and they couldn’t believe that the British government having just won a major war wouldn’t send in a gunboat to enforce the sanctity of the contract that they
