ABSTRACT
It is more than seventeen years since the first edition of this book was written, in 1969. Experience throughout this period has effectively confirmed the point made in the Introduction that a day rarely passes without oil being in the news. Indeed, since 1969 oil affairs have become relatively much more important and thus the text of the original eight chapters has been greatly changed to take note of developments over this period. The world oil industry continued to expand until 1979 (except in 1975), albeit at a slower rate than in the twenty-five years from 1948 to 1973, so that companies in the industry continued to grow both in size and number, whilst the producing countries enjoyed rapidly rising government revenues from their sales of oil abroad and, in particular, from their successes in increasing their revenues per barrel of oil sold. Until 1979, throughout most of the world, oil (taken together with natural gas) continued to increase its share in the total market for energy.
