Anthony Sampson - The Seven Sisters - The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped

In this book I try to tell,in political and human terms, one of the oddest stories in contemporaryhistory: of how the worlds biggest and most critical industry came to bedominated by seven giant companies; how the Western governments delegated muchof the diplomatic function to them; how their control of oil was graduallycountered by the producing countries, until in October 1973 it appearedsuddenly to be wrested from them. And how since then the seven companies, stillthe giants of world trade, have found themselves caught on a politicaltightrope, balancing between the demands of their Western oil consumers andtheir partnerships with the producers. I have approached this task not as aspecialist or an economist, but as an inquiring journalist with a writerslicense to talk to anyone and to travel anywhere. There is already a vastliterature of oil. There are exhaustive company histories allocating praise toall executives. There are technical studies of the economics of the industry.There are romantic narratives of spudding and gushers in the desert. And thereare radical attacks on the intrinsic evils of the companies and the cartels.But there has been very little that describes in human terms how thesecompanies grew up, how ordinary men became caught up in extraordinary exploits,and how the Western nations became dependent on these strange corporations. Ihad first become interested in the oil companies in the early sixties, whilethey were competing hectically across Europe, when I wrote a long profile ofShell in my Anatomy of Britain, which brought me into contact with oilmen,including Enrico Mattei, the Italian tycoon who first popularized the phraseThe Seven Sisters. Thereafter I became interested in the problem of thecontrol of multinationals, which I wrote about in my book Anatomy of Europe(The New Europeans), and later in The Sovereign State of ITT. My interest inthe oil companies, as the oldest and biggest of the multinationals, was greatlystimulated in Washington, where I was spending a year from September 1973,coinciding with the embargo and the energy crisis.

The role of bis companies ininfluencing foreign policy and changing global relationships is an engrossingsubject for study; but it is difficult to describe or analyze the workings ofthe companies without a body of reliable documentary evidence. It was not untilthe crisis of 1973 that a great deal of such documentation came to light;particularly through the exhaustive investigation by the MultinationalsSubcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, under Senator Church. Thedetailed testimony, the subpoenaed memos, secret agreements and cable traffic thatemerged from those hearings, some published, some still unpublished, provide aunique glimpse into the methods and workings of the men inside the oilcompanies. To this copious source this book is much indebted.

With this basis of reliabledocumentation, I have tried to trace the narrative in an informal style,portraying events and decisions through the eyes and minds of the people thatwere involved. There are many economists and oilmen who are inclined to depicttheir industry as subject to iron laws of supply and demand which allow littlescope for human choice or initiative: they suggest that if there is any realmaster of the business, it is the slippery fluid itself, which has changed thebalance of the world. Certainly, the dark, greasy character of crude oil playsan important part in this story. But looking at the key turning points in oilhistory, it is difficult, I believe, to ignore the decisive roles of a handfulof masterful figures who imposed their personalities on the business; fromRockefeller at the beginning, through Deterding and Teagle between the wars, tothe postwar intruders like Getty and Mattei, to the new oil tycoons of ourtime, including the Shah of Iran and Sheikh Zaki Yamani. It is through the viewsand attitudes of such men that I try to convey part of this story.

This book does not set outto explain all the intricacies of the oil business and the energy crisis; itdoes not touch on natural gas, coal or nuclear fuel. Nor does it pretend togive a comprehensive picture of Middle East politics, and the Arab-Israelquestion, which are exhaustively dealt with elsewhere; the fact that Arabnations here receive much more space than Israel reflects only the fact thatthey have the oil, and the close links with companies which are the subject ofthe book. It is the chief aim of the book to convey the history of oil throughthe people involved in it, and to show the attitudes and the psychologicalchanges that have lain behind the extraordinary revolution of our times.