Introduction

The analysis of long-term international oil market developments provides considerable insight into the fundamentals of the oil industry’s organisation. Such an analysis enables us to comprehend the logic of the pendular movements in the industry’s market structures, which have gone from competitive to oligopoly and vice versa, and also offers explanation of the industry’s periodic crises. The understanding of the logic of changing market structures will also enable an analysis of company behaviour. Furthermore, the oil industry, as one of the basic industries in the economy of our time, has attracted an increasing degree of public and political intervention.1