Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia: The Costs of Foreign Petroleum (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 2010
This article evaluates the importance of US international oil companies (IOCs) for US energy security and is particularly important given the absence of scholarly analysis of the subject area in both the energy security and international business literature. The analysis suggests that the interests of US IOCs and the US Government have not been exclusively aligned and that the two sides have historically, in most cases, acted independently in pursuit of their interests. The IOCs act in harmony with the US foreign and energy security policy only when their interests are congruent, or under severe threat, such as that of legal action. The US IOCs have historically played a very limited role in enhancing US energy security. In recent years, to the extent that they have been unable to secure access to new oil reserves and increase their oil production, they are not supporting US energy security interests.
1995
"This paper offers an alternative approach to the repeated occurrence of Middle East “energy conflicts.” Our analysis centres around the process of differential capital accumulation, emphasizing the quest to exceed the “normal rate of return” and to expands one's share in the overall flow of profit. With the evolution of modern capitalism, the dictates of differential accumulation become an ever stronger unifying force, drawing both state managers and corporate executives into increasingly inextricable power driven alliances. The Middle East drama of oil and arms since the 1970s has been greatly affected by this process. On the one hand, rising nationalism and intensified industry competition during the 1950s and 1960s forced the major oil companies toward a greater cooperation with the OPEC countries. The success of this alliance was contingent on the new atmosphere of “scarcity” and oil crisis, which was in turn dependent on the progressive militarization of the Middle East. On the other side of the oil arms equation stood the large U.S. and European based military contractors which, faced with heightened global competition in civilian markets and limited defense contracts at home, increased their reliance on arms exports to oil rich countries. Over the past quarter century, the progressive politicization of the oil business, together with the growing commercialization of arms transfers helped shape an uneasy Weapondollar Petrodollar Coalition between the principal military contractors and petroleum companies. As their environment became intertwined with the broader political realignment of OPEC and the industrial countries, the differential profits of these companies grew evermore dependent on the precarious interaction between rising oil prices and expanding arms exports emanating from successive Middle East “energy conflicts.” At the same time, these companies were not passive bystanders. This is suggested firstly by the very close correlation existing between their arms deliveries to the Middle East and the region's oil revenues and, secondly, by the fact that every single “energy conflict” since the 1967 Arab Israeli War could have been predicted solely by adverse setbacks to the differential profit performance of the large oil companies!"
The African ‘oil rush’ and US national security
Third World Quarterly, 2006
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Democracy and Security
Proponents of the US shale oil and gas industry argued that American citizens' economic prosperity and national security were at stake if the industry was not rapidly expanded. Following copious amounts of a certain type of "patriotic" rhetoric, the industry grew rapidly. Simultaneously, foreign ownership of US shale industry infrastructure occurred in tandem with calls for new policies and laws to limit US citizens' democratic rights with regard to the industry's activities. As a result, we argue that the development of the US shale industry has weakened national security by creating negative security externalities and eroding democratic values. We offer implications for other democratic societies rich in natural resources.
International Oil Companies in Regional Security Complexes: The case of Eastern Mediterranean
International Studies Association (ISA) - Atlanta Georgia. Venue: Hilton 204. Date: March 16, 2016. Time: 10:30 This paper explores the complex role of International Oil Companies (IOCs) within the framework of Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT). The framework is based on the premise that energy acts as an exogenous variable with significant influence on the political, economic and potentially even military securitization relations among states within an RSC. IOCs have a particularly complex role to play in these relations, not least because collaboration between states and IOCs must inevitably be long-term and typically far longer than the time-horizon of decision-making by political actors within their domestic frameworks. Furthermore, unlike other multinational corporations, IOCs enjoy substantially more power if they also serve state interests, allowing them to exert significant influence on the host and target countries. States in turn utilize these MNCs to forge bilateral relations and alliances, thus allowing MNCs to directly or indirectly influence the security and securitization status quo within RSCs where energy either already plays a significant role or becomes an emergent variable. Subsequently, distant powerful states, can, through state-influenced MNCs, acquire the capacity to intervene in RSCs that otherwise fall outside their sphere of influence. This paper uses the Eastern Mediterranean RSCs as a case study.