英语课堂展示1973-oil-crisis.docxVIP

1973 oil crisisBackgroundUSA peak oil productionIn 1970, the USA went through its oil production peak and this is now considered as the prime reason for the first oil shock by historians and industry experts.Founding of OPECThe Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which then comprised 12 countries, including Iran, sevenArab countries (Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates), plus Venezuela, Indonesia,Nigeria, and Ecuador, had been formed at a Baghdad conference on September 14, 1960.At first OPEC had operated as an informal bargaining unit for the sale of oil by resource-rich Third World nations. OPEC confined its activities to gaining a larger share of the profits generated by the Western oil companies and greater control over the members levels of production. As a result of this and other events in the early 1970s, it began to exert its economic and political strength; the major Western oil conglomerates, as well as the importing nations, suddenly faced a unified bloc of exporters.End of Bretton Woods SystemOn August 15, 1971, the United States unilaterally pulled out of the Bretton Woods Accord taking the US off the Gold Exchange Standard (whereby only the value of the U.S. dollar had been pegged to the price of gold and all other currencies were pegged to the U.S. dollar), allowing the dollar to float.Because oil was priced in dollars, this meant that oil producers were receiving less real income for the same price.Yom Kippur WarOn October 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel. This new round in the Arab-Israeli conflict triggered a crisis already in the making; the price of oil was going to rise. The West could not continue to increase its energy consumption 5% annually, while also paying low oil prices, and selling inflation-priced goods to the petroleum producers in the developing Third World. The process of the 1973 oil crisisOctober 6, 1973, Egypt , Syria and other 10 Arab countries