Oil and Sovereignty: Petro-Knowledge and Energy Policy in the United States and Western Europe During the 1970s

475 Pages·2018·3.025 MB·English

by  Rüdiger Graf

Oil and Sovereignty

OIL AND SOVEREIGNTY
Petro-Knowledge and Energy Policy in the United States
and Western Europe in the 1970s
R G
ÜDIGER RAF
Translated by Alex Skinner
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
Published by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
English-language edition
© 2018 Berghahn Books
German-language edition
© 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH Berlin Boston
Originally published in German as Öl und Souveränität: Petroknowledge und Energiepolitik in
den USA und Westeuropa in den 1970er Jahren
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International –
Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany,
a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office,
the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels
(German Publishers & Booksellers Association).
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Graf, Rüdiger, 1975– author.
Title: Oil and Sovereignty: Petro-Knowledge and Energy Policy in the United States and
Western Europe in the 1970s / by Rüdiger Graf; translated by Alex Skinner.
Other titles: Öl und Souveränität. English
Description: First Edition. | New York: Berghahn Books, [2018] | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017057759 (print) | LCCN 2018004381 (ebook) | ISBN
9781785338076 (Ebook) | ISBN 9781785338069 (hardback: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Petroleum industry and trade—Political aspects—United States—
History—20th century. | Petroleum industry and trade—Political aspects—Europe,
Western—History—20th century. | Energy policy—United States—History—20th
century. | Energy policy—Europe, Western—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC HD9565 (ebook) | LCC HD9565 .G724 2018 (print) | DDC
338.2/72809409046—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057759
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78533-806-9 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78533-807-6 ebook
C
ONTENTS
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations x
Introduction Sovereignty and Petro-Knowledge 1
Chapter 1 The World of Oil in the 1950s and 1960s 19
Chapter 2 Shortages, Forecasts, Prevention: Supplying
the Western World with Oil 51
Chapter 3 The Global Communication of the ‘Arab
Oil Weapon’ 88
Chapter 4 The Politics of Sovereignty in the Energy Crisis:
The United States 123
Chapter 5 West Germany within the World of Oil 203
Chapter 6 Oil Conferences: Global Interdependence
and National Sovereignty 286
Chapter 7 Petro-Knowledge, the Perception of Limits
and Sovereignty: Creating the Oil Crisis 332
Conclusion Sovereignty in Crisis and the Oil Crisis in
Contemporary History 387
Bibliography 396
Index 447
I
LLUSTRATIONS
Figure 0.1. Halliburton advertisement, in ‘Petroleum Panorama:
Commemorating 100 Years of Petroleum Progress’, Oil and Gas
Journal 57(5) (1959), inside front cover. 2
Figure 1.1. Ferdinand Mayer, Erdöl-Weltatlas (Hamburg/
Braunschweig, 1966). © Westermann, Bildungshaus
Schulbuchverlage, Braunschweig. 27
Figure 3.1. ‘Yamani leaves Kennedy Airport, 3 December
1973’, New York Daily News. © Getty Images. 109
Figure 7.1. George A. Lincoln, ‘Energy Security: New
Dimension for US Policy’, Air Force Magazine 56(11) (1973),
49–55, here 51. 352
– vi –
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was fi rst published in German in 2014 as Öl und Souveränität:
Petroknowledge und Energiepolitik in den USA und Westeuropa in den
1970er Jahren. Its translation was made possible by the ‘Geisteswissen-
schaften International’ translation prize awarded by the German Publishers
and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels),
which I was fortunate enough to receive in 2016. I have shortened the text
slightly for the translation and included references to a number of signifi -
cant new publications. But I concluded the bulk of the research in 2012
when I completed the fi rst version of the manuscript while working at
Ruhr-University Bochum. My thanks go to the Bochum Faculty of History
and particularly to Constantin Goschler for his many years of support and
innumerable useful suggestions, which have helped make the book what
it is today. The staff at the Chair of Contemporary History have made Bo-
chum both an interesting and pleasant place to work. A number of my col-
leagues in Bochum have contributed to the present work in various ways,
particularly Benjamin Herzog, Martin Kohlrausch, Helmut Maier, Walther
Sperling, Xenia von Tippelskirch and Cornel Zwierlein.
The present study was made possible – or at least much easier – by
several scholarships for which I am deeply grateful. A three-month travel
grant from the Max Weber Foundation (Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche
Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland) enabled me to visit the
German Historical Institutes in Washington, Paris and London. It also al-
lowed me to carry out research at the Library of Congress, the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France, the British Library, the Na tional Archives – Col-
lege Park, the Nixon Presidential Library, the Lafayette-College Libraries
and Archives, the Archives Nationales de France, the Institut Français
du Pétrole and the National Archives of the United Kingdom. My accep-
tance into the Junges Kolleg programme of the North Rhine-Westphalian
Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts (Nordrhein-Westfälische
– vii –
Acknowledgements
Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste) provided me with finan-
cial room for manoeuvre. This allowed me to carry out research at the
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the German Federal
Archives (Bundesarchiv Koblenz) and the Political Archive of the Fed-
eral Foreign Office (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts) in Berlin.
For archival support I thank Diane Shaw, Marc Hanisch and Rüdiger von
Dehn and I am grateful to William Hogan and Hans-Stefan Kruse for al-
lowing me to interview them.
In the academic year 2010–11, as a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow, I
was able to carry out further research at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for
European Studies at Harvard University. There I developed the conceptual
framework of the present study and wrote the first chapters. I benefited
not just from the inexhaustible holdings of the Widener Library, but also
from many lectures and from conversations with David Engerman, Arthur
Goldhammer, Stanley Hoffmann, Hans-Helmut Kotz, Christina May, John
Munro, Uta Poiger, Warren Rosenblum, Quinn Slobodian, Jan Teorell and
Andrew Zimmerman. A second sabbatical in 2011–12 at the Historisches
Kolleg in Munich allowed me to complete the first version of the manu-
script. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Historisches Kol-
leg and the Gerda Henkel Foundation (Gerda Henkel Stiftung), which
provided a research grant. The peaceful atmosphere at the Kolleg, situated
between the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) and the
Englischer Garten, provided excellent conditions for the concluding phase
of the writing, during which I received valuable support from Kolleg staff –
especially Franz Quirin Meyer. My thanks go to Karl-Ulrich Gelberg and
the other fellows, above all Friedrich Lenger, as well as Martina Steber, Ro-
man Köster, Nicolai Hannig and Sebastian Ullrich for stimulating insights
and for making this such a pleasant time.
It took several years to write this book, incurring a tremendous debt of
gratitude. It is often impossible to reconstruct precisely when and where
particular ideas arose. For their criticisms and critical questions, I thank
the organizers and participants at research colloquia in Freiburg, Cologne,
Gießen, Augsburg, Potsdam, Berlin, Bochum, Cambridge/Mass., Munich,
Gießen, Jena, London, Trier, Zurich and Göttingen, where I had the op-
portunity to present my work. During a semester in Göttingen, Bernd
Weisbrod, Habbo Knoch and their colleagues provided me with useful
suggestions. I presented various parts of my work at conferences in San
Diego, Washington, Berlin, Bonn, Padua, Hamburg, Göttingen, Freiburg,
Bern and Edmonton, at the Historikertage in 2010 in Berlin and 2012 in
Mainz, at conferences I organized in collaboration with Hannah Ahlheim,
Cornel Zwierlein and Frank Bösch in Bochum and at the Centre for Con-
temporary History in Potsdam. I thank them and the participants for their
– viii –
Acknowledgements
support, questions and criticisms. My thanks also go to Andreas Wirsching
and Magnus Brechtken for enabling publication of the original German
text in the Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte series and to Ga-
briele Jaroschka of Walter de Gruyter Verlag for her dedicated supervision
of the book. I am delighted that Berghahn Books has agreed to publish an
English translation. I am grateful to Konrad H. Jarausch for setting things
up, Marion Berghahn for agreeing to publish the book, and Chris Chappell
and Amanda Horn for their fi ne stewardship. It was a pleasure to work with
Alex Skinner, who provided the translation. My thanks to Peter Mercer for
formatting the bibliographic information for the English publication, and
for being such a reliable source of research support over the last few years.
The idea of writing a book on the oil crisis arose in 2006 over lunch
with Matthias Pohlig in the inner courtyard of Humboldt-Universität, and
I am grateful to him for that conversation and many others during this
book’s gestation. Moritz Föllmer and Philipp Müller have read virtually
everything I have written over the last few years, their always friendly but
fi rm criticisms leading to marked improvements. In the absence of their
support and without the critical readings of various parts of the manuscript
by Marcus Böick, Aimee Genell, Constantin Goschler, Martin Kohlrausch,
Kim Christian Priemel, Annelie Ramsbrock, Christiane Reinecke, Ulrike
Schaper, Quinn Slobodian and Janosch Steuwer, the book might well have
been fi nished sooner – but it might not have been completed at all. It has
certainly benefi ted greatly from their input.
Rüdiger Graf, Berlin, August 2017
– ix –