Gelsenberg AG, Libya, and the Neocolonial Dimensions of West German Oil Policy

In 1959, a Gelsenberg AG-Mobil Oil consortium made its first major oil discovery in Libya. By the mid-1960s, Libya was providing nearly 30 percent of West Germany's crude oil imports and, for the first time, a West German concern could claim to provide a significant portion of this. What followed was a several year period of increasing interdependence between West German energy markets and the Libyan petroleum industry. With this interdependence came visions of greater local control over West German crude markets spurred in large part by Gelsenberg's recent successes and the hope of future discoveries. These visions, however, never materialized.

My paper will analyze Gelsenberg's activities in Libya as a neocolonial venture. Although Germany had scant colonial history in the region – a fact which alternately hindered and enabled Gelsenberg's initial entrance – it did have national aspirations that involved a deepening engagement with the Libyan oil industry and a growing investment in Libyan sociopolitical stability. This caused the Federal Republic – in part through Gelsenberg – to turn to soft power, bribery, and compromise to expand its influence over Libyan petro-policy. Despite notable successes in the second half of the 1960's, however, Gelsenberg – a symbolic linchpin of West German energy security and a hitherto overlooked instrument of German neocolonialism – soon faltered in the face of the radical, Arab-nationalist regime of Muammar Gaddafi, revealing a vital weakness in the broader West German push for greater oil sovereignty and putting the company's own reslience to the test.