Politics And Raw Materials: The Challenges Of The World Today And Their Consequences For Domestic Policies

The oil crisis which is currently affecting the world has demonstrated that oil operations which have become one of the salient features of the world economy, do not constitute a supply and demand chanism subject to the normal economic laws. Due to certain defects in the world's oil business structure the supply and demand mechanism, if it applies at all, is strongly biased by politics. It is often said that the world's oil operations are an economic mechanism which govern the trade of a political commodity, however, it would be as equally correct to say that it is a political mechanism which governs an economic commodity. In whichevcc way we view the mattec we will eventually reach the conclusion that oil operations as a whole basically have both a political and an economic pith while these piths are linked each other the effect either has on oil operations is a variable that changes according to the factors of time and place. It is a variable because the structural defects in the world's oil operations arise partly from national policies being pursued by the various industrialized countries and partly from the geographic incidence and magnitude of the oil reserves which thereby determine the national policies of the oil producing countries.