Eight Squeezed Sisters. The Oil Majors and the Coming of the 1973 Oil Crisis

The chapter investigates the role of the oil majors (the so called "seven sisters") in the events leading to the 1973 crisis. The basic assumption is that 1973 was the outcome of a process set in motion some years earlier. The 1969 Libyan military coup could be identified as the starting date of a triangular dialectic which involved oilcompanies, producing and consumer countries, that resulted in the demise of the Western oil companies' absolute control on Mideastern crude and drastically increased the price. In this critical phase the companies were in direct charge of the negotiations with the producing countries. Our narrative concentrates on the events between Summer 1970, when the new Libyan governmentdemanded a revision of the concessionary terms, and February 1971, when a group of thirteen companies and the Persian Gulf producer governments signed in Tehran an agreement on new prices. We attempt, in this chapter, to go a step further, relative to the existing literature, and to investigate these negotiations in the light of some of the available primary sources.