ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a limited but strategically important group of Multination Corporations that clearly have a broad affinity. These are companies that are primarily concerned with the production, processing and transport of non-renewable resources, both energy raw materials and minerals. The oil shocks of the 1970s, and the related global recession, formed an important watershed in the evolution of the Multination Resource Corporations (MNRC). Since 1973, for example, not only have those multinationals with oil interests had to accept a price regime which has been powerfully influenced, and at times determined, by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel, but the ownership of the world’s oil production facilities has substantially passed out of their hands. The growing involvement of the centrally planned economies in the exploitation of, and international trade in, resources has added a further element to the changing economic and political environment facing, especially, those MNRCs operating in the Third World.
