Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...mountains this summer, the odds are about 1 to 4 that they will be driving a foreign-built car. The chances are even higher that they will fill their tanks with foreign fuel, since about half the 300 million gal. of gasoline bought each day are made from imported petroleum. What few American consumers realize is that an increasing amount of the fuel they use is not only shipped, refined and delivered but also pumped into their car by foreign producers. To paraphrase the old Texaco jingle, The man who wears the star is also wearing an Arab burnous...
...being challenged on their home turf. For almost three decades after World War II, the great international oil companies based in the U.S. and Europe controlled the supply of the world economy's lifeblood. At the peak of their clout in the 1960s, the renowned Seven Sisters -- British Petroleum, Gulf, Esso (now Exxon), Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) and Texaco -- ruled with unquestioned authority. They discovered crude oil in the Middle East and Asia, shipped it to the developed world in their own tankers, processed it in their own refineries and sold it through gas stations...
...setting sun, replaced by Chevron's stripes after a corporate takeover. More important, some of the new owners are foreign oil companies. Texaco's refining and marketing operations in 26 Eastern and Gulf Coast states are now half-owned by the Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco. Venezuela's national petroleum company bought out Citgo. In Europe a new symbol has emerged: Q8. The homophonic logo representing Kuwait's oil company appears on the signs of 4,800 gasoline stations in Western Europe...
These incursions by national oil companies, which only a decade ago did little more than keep track of the crude they sold wholesale to foreign firms, have transformed the oil industry. The declining clout of U.S. and European companies is more than just a blow to Western pride. As petroleum-producing countries become more involved in refining and retailing, they will carry off an increasing share of profits that might have gone to American business. Yet the overall impact of this steady loss of American economic sovereignty is not all bad. For consumers, it may bring a pleasant stability...
Before 1973, no other global industry had ever been so perfectly integrated, meaning that the companies controlled their product from oil well to gasoline tank. But the rise of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the oil embargoes of the 1970s began to interrupt that arrangement. Newly confident Third World governments abrogated or phased out the concessions under which Western oil companies had pumped oil on their territory. The national oil companies, which controlled 75% of the world's crude output, insisted on higher prices that cut into the profit margins of Western companies. The once cozy world...