The Middle East: U.S.-Saudi Relations and the Oil Crises of the 1980s
Article Summary and Author Biography
In the next five to ten years, the industrial world's demand for oil from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is likely to catch up with the amounts that OPEC countries will be able or willing to make available for export. The leading oil exporter, with more than a fourth of the world total, is Saudi Arabia; the world's largest consumer of oil - and since the lifting of import quotas in the spring of 1973 its leading importer - has been the United States. At what exact point the ascending curves of global demand for oil imports and of available OPEC exports will intersect will therefore depend in large measure on policies adopted by the United States in the next year or two, and by Saudi Arabia in the next five to ten.
Dankwart A. Rustow is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York and currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex, England. He is the co-author of OPEC: Success and Prospects and the author of Middle Eastern Political Systems and other works.
In the next five to ten years, the industrial world's demand for oil from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is likely to catch up with the amounts that OPEC countries will be able or willing to make available for export. The leading oil exporter, with more than a fourth of the world total, is Saudi Arabia; the world's largest consumer of oil - and since the lifting of import quotas in the spring of 1973 its leading importer - has been the United States. At what exact point the ascending curves of global demand for oil imports and of available OPEC exports will intersect will therefore depend in large measure on policies adopted by the United States in the next year or two, and by Saudi Arabia in the next five to ten.
The third major variable will be the rate of the industrial world's recovery from its 1973-75 recession, itself partly dependent on American and Saudi policies from year to year. But whenever the demand and supply curves do intersect, or approach their point of intersection, there is serious danger of physical shortages of oil throughout the non-communist world, of a second price jump comparable in amount to that of 1973-74, and of a series of confrontations not only between the United States and Arab oil-exporting countries but also between the United States and its allies in Western Europe and Japan.
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