Abstract

This article focuses on the role played by multinational oil companies in the Middle East in maintaining international relations. Oil companies occupy a unique position in the Middle East. Although they are not the only type of multinational corporations operating in that area, they stand out clearly because of their bigness, interlocking arrangements and the principle of long-term concessions under which they conduct their business. They are multinational in a dual sense either because of their ownership patterns or because of the geographical spread of their operations. These host countries, regardless of the nature of their political systems, all share two fundamental traits--a desire for speedy development to emulate the economic and technological levels of the more advanced Western societies and assertiveness about their newly won sovereignty. In the political world of the Middle East the companies and the governments face each other against the background of enormous oil reserves and a steadily increasing production in a climate of growing nationalism, of a struggle between conservatism and radicalism and of international relations fraught with dangers arising from Big Power rivalries and punctuated by local conflicts, coups, and intermittent violence.