On the security of oil supplies, oil weapons, oil nationalism and all that

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-0237.2008.00139.x
• Published date: 01 March 2008
• Author: Robert Mabro
• Date: 01 March 2008

On the security of oil supplies, oil weapons,

oil nationalism and all that

Robert Mabro

Honorary President, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

1. A historical note

Concerns about energy supply security are not new. They emerged as regards oil on a

number of occasions even before the shocks of 1973. In the years immediately following

WorldWar I, the view that the worldwas running out of oil suddenly emerged. This was an

early version of the peak oil theory,which is attracting so much attention today. New dis-

coveries in Iraq and Venezuela in the 1920s, and soon later that of the super giant East

Texas field in the United States, gave rise to the opposite concern—the threat of a glut

rather than shortages. The Mexican nationalisations of the late 1930s aggravated the US

and the British governments not because of supply concerns but because their oil compa-

nies had lost highly profitable concessions.

In 1941, Japan faced serious oil supply problems as the US had imposed an oil

embargo after the Japanese invasion of Southern Indochina. The consequence was Pearl

Harbor and the US entry into war.

In 1951, the attempted nationalisation of Iranian oil by Mossadegh brought about the

realisation that the Middle East cannot be taken for granted and that politics really mat-

tered. But Mossadegh failed. The nationalisation of the Suez Canal by Nasser in 1956

revived the concern. The Anglo–French–Israeli military adventure caused Egypt to sink

boats in the Canal.This was a temporary problem which led to the building of supertankers

(VLCCs and ULCCs) that took Saudi and Kuwaiti oil to Europe around the Cape.

The security of oil supply became the real and more permanent issue as a result of the

1973 events—the emergence of OPEC as the administrator of oil prices in international

trade and the imposition of production cuts and embargoes on the US and Holland byArab

oil-exporting countries. Interestingly,these events coincided with the pronouncements of

the Club of Rome about the depletion of mineral resources. We had there once more a fore-

runner of the peak oil theory.

It was perhaps the embargo and the production cuts of October 1973, more than the

sudden oil price increase, which induced among civilser vantsin the US, Europe and Japan

a seemingly permanent fear about supply security. Dr Marcello Colitti, formerly a high-

level executive of the Italian oil company ENI, used to refer to the attitude of European

Union energy officials as affected by ‘petrophobia’.Yetan objective analysis of the use of

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