Word: oils
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Instead, five years after the energy crisis hit, the Sisters' power seems unshaken. Politically their clout is reviving: President Carter, who denounced Big Oil on TV only last fall, is now making an all-out effort to sell natural gas legislation that would allow the companies to raise prices and profits. Economically, in the first three months of this year, the Sisters sold 38% of all the oil moving in world trade, about as large a proportion as ever. Rising output from Alaska, the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, where they dominate drilling, might even increase their...
Though all the Sisters' sales are more than double those in the embargo year of 1973, when the cheap-oil era ended, only three of the companies earned more profit last year than they did then: Shell, Mobil and California Standard (SoCal), which markets under its Chevron Trademark. And none but SoCal has regained the peaks of 1974, when soaring prices gave them a one-shot windfall by raising the value of petroleum they held in inventory. The later profits from price boosts have gone primarily to the OPEC nationalizes of the oil. But the companies have done...
...which underscores the power and versatility that the Sisters gain from sheer size. Different though they are, they all-again like real sisters-show a strong family resemblance. They are all vertically integrated companies controlling the flow of oil from well through pipeline and refinery to gasoline pump. All are multinationals; Shell operates in well over 100 countries, Exxon nearly as many...
...Sisters are all so enormous that their own executives find the figures mind-boggling. They fill seven of the eleven top slots in the list of the world's largest industrial companies; General Motors, IBM and Ford are the only U.S. non-oil firms in their class. In size, the Sisters easily match many of the nations they deal with. Exxon's assets ($38 billion) and Shell's sales ($39 billion last year) are about equal to the Italian national budget...
Soon after nationalization, the OPEC countries realized they could not compete against the Sisters' global distribution networks; the prospects of Kuwaiti refineries in Rotterdam and Saudi gas stations in Illinois evaporated quickly. Indeed, those countries that had their national oil companies sell crude directly to the world market were usually disappointed with the prices they got and the quantities they moved. So the OPEC countries have negotiated pacts under which the Sisters continue to pump the oil, for a fee, take a guaranteed share for themselves, and buy most of the rest at a fixed price...