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This chapter examines the privatization histories and regulatory regimes adopted for oil and companies, electric utilities, and national airlines. The first section details the history of oil and gas sales by governments, and presents estimates of the value of retained government stakes and the value of national oil companies that remain wholly state-owned. The second section provides a similar treatment of electric utility privatizations, though this section also delves much more deeply into the regulatory challenges that arise naturally when governments decide to sell off operating companies in their electric service industries. The final section describes the history of airline privatizations and assesses the current and likely future prospects for further sales of state-owned airlines.

The national campaign for favorable treatment of the California oil companies, which culminated in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 and in the 1920s Teapot Dome scandal over bribery and oil leases, reveals many familiar aspects of American politics and business of the time. From the Taft land withdrawal in 1909 to the passage of the Mineral Leasing Act in 1920, the political representatives of the oil industry struggled to open Southern California oil lands for immediate development. During the two decades following the 1920 leasing act, oil land ownership provided the sole means for the federal government to achieve conservation. The politics that shaped the new property regime for mineral lands in California and the nation drew heavily on the political traditions of the nineteenth-century American system, distributing access to resources among private parties and generally promoting rapid development on the public domain.

This chapter explores China’s strategies to gain access to overseas sources of oil. The first section surveys overseas investments in petroleum projects by Chinese national oil companies (NOCs), government-backed loan-for-oil deals that China signed with a number of petroleum suppliers worldwide, and the goal of Chinese NOCs to diversify the supply of petroleum through overseas production. The data and estimates provide a backdrop for examining China’s global search for petroleum. The second section discusses the main drivers behind China’s overseas petroleum activities. The third and fourth sections look at Sudan and Iran as case studies to investigate China’s global petroleum strategies and its energy security policy making.

This chapter focuses on three cases of incorporation of private investment into Argentina’s oil industry: Juan Domingo Peron’s attempt in 1954, Arturo Frondizi’s oil contracts in 1958–1962, and the industry’s reform in the administration of Carlos Menem in the 1990s. In an effort to explain the failed attempts to incorporate private capital into the industry and the reasons for the renegotiation and cancellation of contracts between the state and the oil companies, the chapter leaves aside the external framework in order to focus on internal issues. This chapter also explains changes in the roles of private investors—both domestic and foreign—in the Argentinean oil industry by focusing on events internal to Argentina. This approach differs from many studies of changes in business and government relations in oil and other mineral industries, most of which draw heavily on shifts in the international industry.

This chapter explores the explanatory power of the approach this book has labelled the Corporate Actor (CA) model in accounting for the differences in the climate change strategies adopted by the oil companies in this study. It explains that the CA model suggests that differences in the companies' climate strategy choice are explained by differences in the companies themselves. This chapter analyses three company-specific factors that may have an impact on strategy choice in relation to an issue such as climate change. These include the environmental risk associated with current and future corporate operations, the company's capacity for organisational learning, and the environmental reputation of the company.

This chapter first examines the important relationship between the central government and the national oil companies (NOCs) and the governance of China’s energy sector. It argues that China’s leaders have the authority to control the NOCs and therefore the means to develop and implement a hedging strategy that provides opportunities to manage a potential crisis in the international petroleum market and minimizes risks to China’s energy security. It then analyzes China’s energy mix and the drivers behind its demand for oil. Finally, it explores how domestic hedging strategies have been developed and implemented by focusing on the construction of strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs) and on developing a refinery capacity.

Taking a global perspective, this chapter examines the origins of legal systems to facilitate hydrocarbon exploitation and the growth of the petroleum industry. Identifying four main approaches to state resource management, the emergence of these regimes is situated within wider socio-economic contexts which illustrates connections between a state's approach and shifts in political economy nationally and and internationally. In doing so, the influence of processes such as imperialism, Keynesianism and neoliberalism on state resource management becomes apparent. The chapter considers power struggles between states and oil companies and discusses the formation of the Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries and member states' efforts to assert ‘permanent sovereignty’ over hydrocarbon resources. Deliberating the wave of nationalisations and increases in national oil companies which occurred during the 1970s, the ideas underpinning these developments are scrutinised alongside the ‘neoliberal counter-wave’ (Ryggvik, 2010) which occurred in the 1980s. Signifying a rollback in state participation in hydrocarbon exploitation globally amidst associated ideologies, changes in the latter decade have been overturned in recent years through a growth in national oil companies and moves by states towards asserting stronger control over hydrocarbons, thus illustrating some of the dynamics and conflicts of state resource management.

Chapter 6 is devoted to the Abadan Crisis and the circumstances surrounding the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the dispute between Britain and Iran over the ownership of oil in Iran, known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company case. The Iranians’ argument for their sovereign right to oil was based on the corporate veil of the state as a justification for the expropriation of the company’s assets and the corporate veil of the company to sustain the separation between ownership (the British Government) and control (the company’s management). The Iranian position used an old toolbox to promote a vision of a new postcolonial world order based on equality and distributive justice. The chapter juxtaposes the Iranian position with Philip Jessup’s theory of transnational law and the hermeneutics of legal realism in the British position and chronicles how the Iranian strategy and success in the ICJ eventually ushered the shift toward a new international investment law regime.

This chapter discusses the US international empire in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since the 1920s. Constructed by both US multinational oil companies (MNOCs) and the US government, US empire in the MENA sought to ensure the cheap, plentiful flow of oil from the region to Western consumers. However, US and European empires in the MENA generated popular local resistance to client regimes and their Western backers. This resistance to the US-led order developed in part due to poor labor and human rights conditions, cultural and religious alienation toward encroaching foreign social systems (including capitalism), and nationalist aspirations. This situation increasingly led oil-rich US allies in the MENA to collaborate with each other and additional oil-rich countries to challenge the US-dictated terms of the global petroleum economy. Growing US support for Israel would likewise increasingly push US-allied, oil-rich Arab governments to join Arab countries more hostile to Washington in challenging the United States.

In several democratic countries, public officials sought oil money in part to finance their election campaigns. In Brazil and Nigeria, landslides of corruption followed, and billions of dollars in public funds were lost. National oil companies proved particularly susceptible to abuse. But it was not all bad news, as some democratic institutions proved their mettle. Electoral and judicial agencies worked as intended, and kept the perpetrators from enjoying their loot in peace. In the United States, the tactics were more subtle with oil companies spending handsomely on election campaigns, public advertising and lobbying.

Chapter 4 traces into the umbilical tie between kleptocratic regimes and their oil and describes how the industry helps keep them alive. The leaders of Angola, Azerbaijan, and Russia used their booming oil industries to strengthen their political positions. Thanks to their long-term horizons and monopolies on power, they nurtured the oil sector while also strategically milking it for political and personal purposes. Above all else, they channeled the oil boom windfall toward their allies, making sure that the riches only fattened the pockets of oligarchs loyal to the regime.

In this chapter Price-Smith delineates the foundations of the international political economy of oil, and argues that the global political economy of energy has shifted away from the liberal model toward an increasingly statist and often illiberal model that is currently dominated by the National Oil Companies (NOCs). The implications of this shift are significant for the United States, as its symbiotic model based on collusion with the international oil companies now seems a bit archaic. That said, the technological revolution in computer visualization and fracking may force many of the NOCs to partner with technically sophisticated International Oil Companies, and this may shift some power away from the NOCs. Price-Smith also argues that even as US oil production surges, the idea of US energy independence remains illusory.

The Prologue describes the rise of Anglo-American “petrocapital” after WWII and the formation of the “concessions system” in the Middle East in the 1920s and 1930s. The chapter concentrates on the formation of the first “petrostate”, Venezuela, that by the end of the 1920s had become totally dependent on oil rent, as well as being the largest petroleum exporter in the world up to the end of the 1960s. The chapter also describes the first nationalist reactions in Latin America as well as in the Middle East to the dominant role of the oligopoly of international oil companies.

During the boom years, companies, banks, and other private sector players used all kinds of tactics to tilt the oil sector playing field in their favor. They wined and dined top decision-makers, went into business with political insiders, and paid bribes, often via middlemen or fixers. Collusion and tax avoidance reared their heads too. Stories from Angola, Australia, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Libya, Nigeria, Norway, and the United States reveal the risks companies took in order to win a piece of the oil boom action.

This essay analyzes the evolution the Brazilian oil industry during the second half of the 20th century and focuses on the aggressive push offshore by the state-owned oil company (or national oil company, NOC), Petrobras. Unlike most other NOCs, which were created to capture rents from large oil reserves previously discovered by foreign companies, Petrobras was instilled with a mission to achieve national self-sufficiency in oil. Although a state-owned oil monopoly born out of nationalism, Petrobras's success in finding and producing oil from increasingly extreme water depths depended on adapting techniques and ideas fashioned abroad and importing high-tech expertise, equipment, and services. This essay contributes to scholarship on the political economy of NOCs by revealing the largely unacknowledged role of multinational oil service companies, contractors, and consultants in the creation and maintenance of an otherwise nationally controlled oil sector.

This chapter provides a case study of the French oil company, Total, in attempt to explain why they changed business strategy and chartered international fleets instead of transporting the oil themselves, a growing maritime practice. It explores the economic, financial, technological, and political factors that caused uncertainty in the shipping industry and made the economic cycle unstable, resulting in the chartering of fleets. It finds that the oil industry shifted to open market purchases and oil companies distanced themselves from the transport role in attempt to create a global system within the industry.

After an introduction to the oil and gas industry and its structure, Chapter 15 notes how economic pressures have motivated the formation of alliances. It then identifies different types of alliance in the sector, the motives for forming them, and the benefits that are expected to result. Oil and gas alliances involve nationally strategic and environmentally sensitive assets, and this chapter illustrates the political pressures which they can experience as a result. While there is legitimate concern in host countries about the exploitation of national assets by international oil companies, such companies may also face pressures that stem from political opportunism and corruption. The chapter closes by noting how forming alliances with IT providers to speed up digital applications has become an essential strategy for many oil and gas companies.

This chapter examines the global, maritime, and continental implications of China’s energy security policy. It emphasizes three global implications: first, the increased influence of China’s national oil companies (NOCs) in the international petroleum market; second, China’s growing cooperation with international energy institutions and organizations; and third, the effects of China’s expanding global oil interests on international security. It analyzes China’s maritime energy security from three perspectives: first, the implications of China’s commercial maritime interests and the buildup of a state-owned tanker fleet in the international tanker and shipping market; second, how China’s naval buildup, the emphasis on protecting sea lines of communication (SLOCs), and the global commons shape cooperation and conflict at sea; and third, how the opening of new shipping routes in the Arctic will shape China’s energy security policy as well as its policy toward the Arctic region. The chapter also looks into the continental aspects of China’s energy security policy, examines the “energy factor” in Sino-Russian relations and the potential for Sino-Russian cooperation, competition, and rivalry in Central Asia and the Far East.