ABSTRACT
The main area of activity of the international oil industry lies outside the U.S.A., the U.S.S.R. and the world’s other communist countries. This area comprises two sets of nation states. The larger set consists of the hundred and more nations in the world’s increasingly complex political framework whose interests in oil and whose attractions for the international oil industry lie in their functions as oil-consuming nations. These countries’ oil problems, and their associated geo-political implications, will be considered in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. Meanwhile, in this chapter our concern is with the much smaller set of nation states. This comprises a handful of countries which produce oil not primarily for their own use, but rather for export, in crude of refined form, to other countries of the world. These nations are picked out in Map 3 (p. 76), which shows those countries in which oil production exceeds oil consumption by four times or more. The world's oil-exporting and importing countries, 1985. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203366257/9a30bc54-6585-4e48-bea7-8420ee10ae76/content/map3_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
