The Economics Of The Oil Crisis

Appendix Three: Chronology of a Month of Crisis: October 1973 -- Guide to Further Reading -- Index

"This book is about the world's endowment of oil. It is a very important subject, considering that cheap oil-based energy has been the lifeblood of the world's economy over the best part of this century." -- P. 5.

This book explains the place of oil in the economic and political predicaments that now confront the West. Thompson explains the problems that the rising cost of oil posed in the years leading up to the 2008 crash, and the difficulties that a volatile oil market now poses to economic recovery under the conditions of high debt, low growth and quantitative easing. The author argues that the 'Gordian knot' created by the economic and political dynamics of supply and demand oil in the present international economy poses a fundamental challenge to the assumption of economic progress embedded in Western democratic expectations.

Essay from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Economic and Social History, grade: 2,0, Turku School of Economics (Department of economics), course: Economic History and Development, language: English, abstract: Nowadays oil is still the world’s most important single source of energy. The world’s industry is influenced by the cost of energy which, in turn, is influenced by the price of crude oil, taxation and other factors. If the cost of energy goes up, then prices of goods and services will increase, subsequently it will cause lower availability of products, higher transportation’s costs and in turn lower economic growth. The latter will influence negatively the efficiency and productivity of the whole world’s industry. This means that if oil prices go too high or too low there will be unlikely consequences for both oil producers and oil consumers. This paper analyzes the oil crisis of 1970ies. The first section concerns the history of the October War (6 – 23 October 1973) that led to the oil embargo, one of the most dramatic events for the world economy. The embargo lasted six months, beginning on 17 October 1973 and ending on 18 March 1974. The second section deals with the impact of the energy crisis on different countries. It caused terrible consequences for the economies of all industrialized countries such as recession, inflation, unemployment, lost economic growth and stagflation. But the essential question is whether the energy crisis was a real shortage or mainly a matter of politics.

In October 1973 two crises – one economic, one political – intersected, with dramatic and long term consequences for international relations. On 6 October, Egypt and Syria launched an attack on Israel, and within a few days the major Arab oil producers announced their support by use of the ‘oil weapon’, including a boycott of supplies for countries friendly to Israel and a programme of production cuts. This was followed by the unilateral declaration of a steep increase in the price of oil by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The result was international panic and world recession. Crude oil prices soared by a massive fourfold in just three months. The West's vulnerability had been exposed: it was being held hostage to oil. Yet, despite efforts to address this dependence on oil imports in following years, the 1979 Iranian Revolution triggered a further upward surge in prices. Today, the importance of oil remains at the forefront of the West's foreign policy calculations in the Middle East. In this fascinating and timely new look at the oil crisis, Fiona Venn examines these issues and the more unexpected effects of the crisis. She asks just how much really changed in the economic balance of power. Most importantly she argues that OPEC was used as a scapegoat for the world recession, which had been already underway when the crisis detonated.