ABSTRACT
For the first fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, there was no reason to predict any upheaval within the international oil industry, dominated, although not monopolized, by American companies. The ‘Seven Sisters’ - the American majors, Texaco, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and Gulf Oil, together with British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell - cooperated with each other to control the international oil market through a series of marketing agreements and interlocking ownership of many of the large oilfields of the Middle East. In the early 1950s, the Justice Department accumulated evi dence of an international petroleum cartel, hoping to prove that oil companies cooperated in ways that were in restraint of trade. However, first the Truman then the Eisenhower administrations initially toned down and later completely dismissed the investigations. They argued that such an investigation was against the interests of national security; oil was so critical to the economy and defence of the United States that nothing should be done which might potentially harm the oil companies.1 W ith political support, and a dominating pos ition in the prolific oilfields of the developing world, the position of the Seven Sisters appeared unassailable. Ultimately the extent of the majors’ power was to be whittled down, first by increased competition from other oil companies, and later by the producing governments, but until 1960 they cooperated to provide a stable international oil order, which provided cheap oil not only to the United States but also to Western Europe and Japan.
