In October 1973 OPEC sprang the first “oil shock” on the oil-importing countries. The member states took over the pricing of their petroleum and within three months prices had climbed to an unprecedented level. Only then did OPEC impress itself upon the public consciousness, although the...

The quadrupling of the oil price by the OPEC in 1973 was a poignant event in the post-war development of the world economy. Which measures and mechanisms conduced to the international income redistribution necessitated by the hoisting of the oil prices in the past five years?

In the spring of 1978 the International Energy Agency (IEA) staged the second “Allocation System Test”, a simulation exercise designed to check the ability of 19 OECD countries to cope jointly with another oil crisis. The topicality of such a contingency test is demonstrated by the...