ABSTRACT
While changes in the oil industry, the Middle East and the world economy might have been expected as a consequence of the events of October 1973, at the time many contemporaries assumed that it would also bring about a substantial reordering of the international system to produce a fairer situation for developing countries. OPEC itself claimed that it was acting as a prototype for other primary producers to follow, thus driving up the prices of a wide range of primary commodities: individual members also led the way in calling for a fundamental reap praisal of the relationship between the developed industrial West on the one hand, and the less-developed countries, or LDCs, on the other. In March 1973 OPEC had, for the first time, envisaged a role that went beyond the direct relationship between oil-producing states and the companies, and in June that same year the 34th OPEC conference issued a policy statement in which the member states agreed to take action, first to gain greater access to the technology and markets of the developed countries for their present and future industrial products and, second, to strengthen cooperation with the oil-importing developing nations.1 In a special United Nations session in spring 1974 the host nation (and OPEC member), Algeria, explicitly presented OPEC’s actions as the first step in the fight back of the Third World against their subordination in the world economy. The symbol of this restructuring was the call for a New International Economic Order, or NIEO.
