Page 327 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

CHAPTER VII

The Masquerade

Members shall demand that oil companies maintain their prices
steady and free from all unnecessary fluctuations.

First resolution of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries, September i960

Masquerade: ad. Sp. mascarada,/. mascara mask; usually taken
as a. Arab, maskhara - laughing-stock, f. root sakhira to ridicule.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

There used to be a certain amount of argument in the 1960s, in those circles
where the subject was of interest, about whether or not the British political and
military presence in the Gulf was a help or a hindrance to the international oil
companies in their operations, and especially in their relations with the
governments of the oil-producing states. The argument was never resolved,
partly because it was clouded from the start by the personal or ideological
predilections of many of the disputants, partly because the oil companies
themselves were reluctant or unable to express a definite opinion one way or

another, but mostly because the only conclusive way in which the issue could
be decided was the empirical one of putting it to the test. This, it need hardly be
said, has now been done, and the years that have passed since the British
withdrew from the Gulf have seen not only a great erosion of the oil companies
position vis-a-vis the governments of the oil-producing states, but also the
imposition of a selective embargo upon oil exports, arbitrary cutbacks in
production without reference to market requirements, enormous increases in
the price of crude oil, the disappearance of any effective control by the
countries of Western Europe over their principal source of oil supplies, and the
dislocation of their economies to a highly dangerous extent. It would be
erroneous, however, to conclude that a simple cause-and-effect relationship

linked the British withdrawal and the developments which succeeded it, even
though the withdrawal undoubtedly contributed to them. The decline in the

oil companies’ fortunes in the Gulf had set in some years earlier: it was on y