The emergence of the international oil corporation as a political actor in the twentieth century, seen in BP's infrastructure and information arrangements in Iran. In the early twentieth century, international oil corporations emerged as a new kind of political actor. The development of the world oil industry, argues Katayoun Shafiee, was one of the era's largest political projects of techno-economic development. In this book, Shafiee maps the machinery of oil operations in the Anglo-Iranian oil industry between 1901 and 1954, tracking the organizational work involved in moving oil through a variety of technical, legal, scientific, and administrative networks. She shows that, in a series of disagreements, the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, which later became BP) relied on various forms of information management to transform political disputes into techno-economic calculation, guaranteeing the company complete control over profits, labor, and production regimes. She argues that the building of alliances and connections that constituted Anglo-Iranian oil's infrastructure reconfigured local politics of oil regions and examines how these arrangements in turn shaped the emergence of both nation-state and transnational oil corporation. Drawing on her extensive archival and field research in Iran, Shafiee investigates the surprising ways in which nature, technology, and politics came together in battles over mineral rights; standardizing petroleum expertise; formulas for calculating profits, production rates, and labor; the “Persianization” of employees; nationalism and oil nationalization; and the long-distance machinery of an international corporation. Her account shows that the politics of oil cannot be understood in isolation from its technical dimensions. The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Knowledge Unlatched.

Published in association with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

A Brookings Institution Press and Chatham House publication Ninety percent of the world's oil reserves are entrusted to state-owned companies. Originally created as political instruments, these so-called national oil companies (NOCs) face new demands amid today's dwindling oil reserves and simmering social pressures. Increasingly, state-owned oil firms—particularly in the Middle East—are having to balance the political demands of their governments with the need to be commercially competitive. In this ground-breaking new volume, Valerie Marcel draws on unprecedented access to the politicians, engineers; and businessmen directing five Middle Eastern state oil companies to shed light on one of the most secretive segments of the international oil industry. The author tells the stories of Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the National Iranian Oil Co., Sonatrach of Algeria, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.—oil titans which together produce one quarter of the world's oil and hold half of the world's known oil and gas reserves. Dr. Marcel explains the complex bond between each state and its oil company, tracing the relationship's evolution from the politically charged days of foreign concessions to today's world of profit-driven decisionmaking. Drawn from over 120 interviews with company executives, middle managers, and oil-ministry officials, the author identifies a number of surprising new trends in these companies' strategy, and she paints a picture of their nascent sense of corporate identity. The book provides rare, up-to-date insight into how state-owned companies are striking a balance between their national mission and their commercial needs. The book also provides an insider's guide to these companies' unique culture. Executives and researchers in the region—both inside and outside the oil industry—will find it a valuable tool for understanding business in the Middle East.

Oil Spaces traces petroleum’s impact through a range of territories from across the world, showing how industrially drilled petroleum and its refined products have played a major role in transforming the built environment in ways that are often not visible or recognized. Over the past century and a half, industrially drilled petroleum has powered factories, built cities, and sustained nation-states. It has fueled ways of life and visions of progress, modernity, and disaster. In detailed international case studies, the contributors consider petroleum’s role in the built environment and the imagination. They study how petroleum and its infrastructure have served as a source of military conflict and political and economic power, inspiring efforts to create territories and reshape geographies and national boundaries. The authors trace ruptures and continuities between colonial and postcolonial frameworks, in locations as diverse as Sumatra, northeast China, Brazil, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kuwait as well as heritage sites including former power stations in Italy and the port of Dunkirk, once a prime gateway through which petroleum entered Europe. By revealing petroleum’s role in organizing and imagining space globally, this book takes up a key task in imagining the possibilities of a post-oil future. It will be invaluable reading to scholars and students of architectural and urban history, planning, and geography of sustainable urban environments.

The Islamic Republic has been struggling to reform itself for 25 years and each time the experiment has gone awry. Iran's revolutionary theocracy has evolved, but the most problematic aspects of its ideology and institutions have managed to endure since 1979. Can the Iran Nuclear Deal, an agreement crafted through intense dialogue with an old adversary, alter the essence of the Islamic Republic and its turbulent relationship with the world? In Iran Reconsidered: The Nuclear Deal and the Quest for a New Moderation Suzanne Maloney argues that the nature of the Islamic Republic amplifies the threat posed by its nuclear ambitions and animates the most tenacious opponents of the deal. For that reason, the fierce debate that has erupted in Washington over the deal hinges on the prognosis for Iran's future.

Relying on a rich cache of previously classified notes, transcripts, cables, policy briefs, and memoranda, Andrew Cooper explains how oil drove, even corrupted, American foreign policy during a time when Cold War imperatives still applied, and tells why in the 1970s the U.S. switched its Middle East allegiance from the Shah of Iran to the Saudi royal family. Amid the oil shocks of the early 1970s, there was one man the U.S. could rely on: the Shah of Iran. The Shah sold us oil; we sold him weapons. But the U.S. and other industrialized economies could not tolerate repeated annual double digit increases in oil prices. During the 1976 election campaign, President Gerald Ford decided that he had to find a country that would break the OPEC monopoly and sell the U.S. oil more cheaply. On the advice of Treasury Secretary William Simon -- and against the advice of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- Ford made a deal to sell advanced weaponry to the Saudis in exchange for a more moderate price hike in oil. The Shah's economy was destabilized, and disaffected elements mobilized to overthrow him. The U.S. had embarked on a long relationship with the autocratic Saudi kingdom that continues to this day.

The Iran-Iraq war broke out in September 1980. It brought death and suffering to hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and devastated the economies of both countries. It also increased international tensions by precipitating new alliances and rearrangement of forces in the already turbulent Middle East. The focus of this book is on the historical, economic and political dimensions of the war between Iraq and Iran. It examines many aspects of what proved to be a very complex conflict; including its long history, its present economic and political setting, the different responses to the war by outside parties and its regional and world implications.

This paper presents a simple macroeconomic model of the oil market. The model incorporates features of oil supply such as depletion, endogenous oil exploration and extraction, as well as features of oil demand such as the secular increase in demand from emerging-market economies, usage efficiency, and endogenous demand responses. The model provides, inter alia, a useful analytical framework to explore the effects of: a change in world GDP growth; a change in the efficiency of oil usage; and a change in the supply of oil. Notwithstanding that shale oil production today is more responsive to prices than conventional oil, our analysis suggests that an era of prolonged low oil prices is likely to be followed by a period where oil prices overshoot their long-term upward trend.

Nations and international organizations are increasingly using sanctions as a means to achieve their foreign policy aims. However, sanctions are ineffective if they are executed without a clear strategy responsive to the nature and changing behavior of the target. In The Art of Sanctions, Richard Nephew offers a much-needed practical framework for planning and applying sanctions that focuses not just on the initial sanctions strategy but also, crucially, on how to calibrate along the way and how to decide when sanctions have achieved maximum effectiveness. Nephew—a leader in the design and implementation of sanctions on Iran—develops guidelines for interpreting targets’ responses to sanctions based on two critical factors: pain and resolve. The efficacy of sanctions lies in the application of pain against a target, but targets may have significant resolve to resist, tolerate, or overcome this pain. Understanding the interplay of pain and resolve is central to using sanctions both successfully and humanely. With attention to these two key variables, and to how they change over the course of a sanctions regime, policy makers can pinpoint when diplomatic intervention is likely to succeed or when escalation is necessary. Focusing on lessons learned from sanctions on both Iran and Iraq, Nephew provides policymakers with practical guidance on how to measure and respond to pain and resolve in the service of strong and successful sanctions regimes.