The oil companies were making billions when petrol was 17cents including tax. Once the well pump is working it can pump day and night, a field of pumps will pump/ work with no one on site, I've seen that. In the late 60ies, the American people were told the world is running out of oil.
The truth was: There are seas of oil in the earth.
It was decided to pump less oil, reduce supply to slightly below demand.
In almost all other countries petrol was always more expensive.
Here's a heart warming story:
Auntie Sultana Arslanian, an American Citizen, stayed with her cousin, Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian, a British Citizen, for some time at his mansion in Paris. His main base of operation was Portugal.
He was known as: Mister 5%. He arranged that his payment for each service just 5% that would be transferred, should for some reason be it weather, war or strife, to the oil company operational base not with the field location or country where the service was given.
For a time he was said to be~ the richest man on earth. I never knew him or his son Nubar, they gave me a book written about him.
re: Jonathan Conlin
His greatest deal was the 1928 Red Line Agreement he negotiated be-
tween the British, Americans, and French, under which all agreed to collabo-
rate to exploit oil deposits within the bounds of the former Ottoman Empire.
This cartel, vested as the Iraq Petroleum Company (or IPC, formerly the
Turkish Petroleum Company) protected all parties from price-cutting or
sudden changes in “liftings” (the amount of oil extracted), and secured
Gulbenkian’s own firm, Participations and Explorations Inc. (Partex) a 5%
stake of total production. “Mr Five Percent” was born, and carefully
watched over his Agreement, tweaking it as circumstances demanded.
Most of his extended family was killed in the 1915-1924 Armenian Genocide as historc Armenia was taken for modern day turkey.
He choose a man, Samuel Marcus, who imported shells, to head Shell Oil. { I found him on the internet as Marcus Samuel.}
Let me diverge and tell you a story, or two, I heard regarding Calouste:
He was considered eccentric maybe crazy. Once when being interviewed he was asked: It is said, Mr. Gulbenkian, that you, a very rich man borrowed a sum of $1.00 from a bank, and gave boxes of bonds as security for the loan.
To this Gulbenkian answered: If you can find for me safe deposit for bonds and securities for less than the 2 cents per year I pay to the bank, I will store them there.
He leased, a perpetual lease, an entire floor of a Lisbon Hotel in depressed times for a small amount and never, in the years to come, let them out of the lease.
That's enough, I hate to read long posts.
I'm not going to prof read this good luck.
