British Diplomatic Oil Crisis: Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Geopolitical Rivalries in the Persian Gulf: Drawing a Lesson? Or Sir Anthony Eden‘s Delusion of Grandeur.
On the
other hand, at the same period when Britain started to impose
economic sanctions on Iran in 1951, the oil cartel was drawing up
plans to isolate Iranian oil. This was while negotiations, which the
studies in the previous chapters showed, between Britain, Iran and
the United States were going on.
In the
United Kingdom, the request of the Ministry of Fuel and
Power, an Oil Supply Advisory Committee in June 1951 was formed. Sir
William Fraser of the Anglo-Oil Company became its chairman. Other
members were representatives of Trinidad Leaseholds and Shell Group.
Similar
action took place in the United States. The Foreign
Petroleum Supply Committee was formed in June 1951. The chairman of
this committee was the Secretary of the Interior and Petroleum
Administrator for Defence, Oscar
L. Chapman, and worked in
close co-operation with its British
counterpart. This organisation comprised 19 companies, five of which
were the five major cartel firms, such as Texas and Gulf, New Jersey
Standard, California Standard, Socony-Vacuum and a number of their
associates and subsidiaries. The Sinclair Oil Company, and the new
group in the Middle East, the American Independent Oil Company,
Pacific Western Oil Corporation, and Superior Oil Company.
On 2nd
August 1951, the drafting of a joint plan of action to meet
the shortage of oil as a result of shutting down of Iranian oil
began, by the British and American committees. Within a few weeks,
in accordance with the plan adopted by the two countries’
committees, production in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Canada
was increased by a monthly total of 2,000,000 tons.
During
the first half of 1952, Middle East oil production rose by
15,000,000 tons, thus exactly replacing the lost output from Iran.
Total
Middle East production rose from 97,100,000 tons in 1951, to
106,100,000 in 1952, one sixth of the world’s output
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