Structural changes in the international oil industry: some consequences for producer-countries

Abstract

The international oil-world has gone through fundamental changes during the last decade. The power of the international companies has declined markedly. A new industrial structure has emerged; a structure which, in many ways, is fundamentally different from the old one. This development has important consequences for all oil-producing states. The world has become much more complicated for these countries. A national oil policy no longer is simply a matter of trying to maximize a host-countries' share of the oil-rent. It has now also become much more difficult to blame the oil-companies for all the ills of a country when the companies have been nationalized. The oil-sector offers instead whole specter of new challenges for oil-producing states. It is in particular imperative to plan how the oil-activities including the spending of oil-revenues can be integrated into a broader national ecocomic framework. Both Malaysia and Norway with diversified economics could learn something from each other in this respect. Producer-states in the modern world also have to gain a better understanding of the concept "technological dependence". In this paper we will discuss these two problems in more detail.