Oil Crisis Essay

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As the Middle East approached the 1970’s, it experienced serious turmoil. The region was becoming ridden with disagreement and panic to obtain and protect oil resources. With this increasing demand and the supplies rapidly decreasing there was the impending doom of an “energy crisis”. President Nixon in an attempt to decrease pressure, abolished oil quotas in 1973. Meanwhile in the Middle East, the pressure was mounting to make an agreement and make the oil companies comply with the outcomes. In Egypt, the king proclaimed that war would be their only option. Later that year, Saudi Arabia decided to support Egypt with their “oil weapon”. The world realized during this time that most of the world’s oil was located in the Middle East. Egypt began its war and OPEC began trying to negotiate to bring cooperation between the countries. The October War brought U.S. support and supply to Israel in the midst of the disagreement. However this only heightened the animosity between nations and the Arab Gulf OPEC nations raised their oil prices to 70%. This rise in prices was real problem for the United States because they had no spare production to make up for the lack of Arab oil. Inside the U.S., the public suffered greatly because of the popularity of suburbia which in turn created a large dependency on oil to go anywhere. Therefore, the OPEC shock was detrimental to the life of the American citizen during its duration. People became very aware of the importance of oil, its price, and its availability. Thus there became an especially strong political pressure on companies, which promoted “equal suffering” and “fair share” principles to promote diversion. The king of Iran came up with a new basis for oil prices and it won app... ... middle of paper ... ...market because of political instability. During the later decades many countries became heavily focused on foreign policy in the Middle East to maintain a stronghold in the oil industry because of the world’s heavy dependence upon it. In the long run OPEC has caused many problems between the oil industry and its consumers, as well as the international relations between the Middle East and the rest of the world. Its effects on the oil industry has left them simply bureaucracies instead of separate entities with their own power. Unfortunately it has also left the Middle East a highly volatile region. It has suffered manipulation, assault, and reckless abandon due to its abundance of oil. Modernly the Middle East continues to suffer because of their oil curse and will continue to be a problem in international relations because it is of such interest.

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