External Federator? OPEC and the Community’s Environmental Policy in the 1970s

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created in 1960 with the main aim of defending the current posted prices of oil. During the 1960s OPEC’s internal struggle centered on the conflict between those countries that aimed at producing the highest possible amount of crude (Saudi Arabia and Iran) and those that hoped for controlling production as a way to increase prices (Venezuela). At the beginning of the 1970 the international oil market shifted from consumer’s market to a producer’s market. The intellectual debate on the “limits to growth” and an increasing awareness about limited resources also helped empowering producing countries. OPEC members then shifted their policy by promoting: higher prices for oil, possible production cuts to control the oil market, and even a discourse on the environmental preservation of the Persian Gulf. This paper will aim at assessing how the new successful OPEC policy at the beginning of the 1970s impacted on the energy choices of the EC in the context of an emerging environmental policy and an increasingly controversial debate on the nuclear option.