ARAMCO, the United States, and Saudi Arabia: A Study of the Dynamics of Foreign Oil Policy, 1933-1950

What would the oil history of the 1970s have been like if the U.S. government had been a major owner of ARAMCO and a British-American government cartel had controlled production in the Middle East? How close these two possibilities were and why they were not realized is a major part of the story in this clearly written and quite objective study. Based largely on archives and interviews, it corrects some widely believed errors about the interplay of oil companies, politicians and bureaucrats.