ABSTRACT
Ever since the 1973 crisis, and the heated political confrontation between the major oil companies and individual consumer governments, the international oil groups have been saying that they no longer had the power or the commercial incentive to act as a stabilizing force in the oil trade. Some oil companies, most perhaps, have been rather more cautious than governments in assuming a substantial real price increase for energy as the implication of the oil shocks of the 1970s. By 1985 the Seven Sisters’ old dominance will be altered beyond recognition, as commercial pressures take their toll. A fall in oil prices obviously changes some of this thinking, in some ways to the benefit of the industry. In a world where the banks and international financial institutions are taking a harder view of Third World investment and where governments are cutting public expenditure, oil demands high-cost risk investments.
