Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
The point of view from which this article is written is that the world-wide trend toward increased use of oil involves Western Europe in greater risks of interruption of supplies than it does the other major world consumers (the United States and the USSR), who produce most of their own oil; and that the implications of permitting the trend to continue to develop at its present rate should be seriously reconsidered. The trend toward increased use of oil in Western Europe has been clear for some years, as it was for the United States a bit earlier and has become for the USSR more recently. What is somewhat alarming at the present time is that the process is speeding up in Western Europe and that resistance to it is weakening.
1 In the United States, where oil production costs are highest, there was no increase in crude oil prices in real terms over the first half of the twentieth century. For the newer oil-producing areas of the world outside the United States, taken as a whole, unit production costs of oil have probably fallen.
2 This problem has been discussed at length by the Economic Commission for Europe in Relationship Between Coal and Black Oils in the Western European Fuel Market, Geneva, August 1954; and The Price of Oil in Western Europe, Geneva, March 1955.
3 Report of the Committee on National Policy for the Use of Fuel and Power Resources, Cmd. 8647, London, 1952.
4 Central Electricity Generating Board, First Report and Accounts, London, 1959, p. 5.Google Scholar
5 OEEC, Europe's Growing Needs of Energy: How Can They Be Met? Paris, 1956.Google Scholar
6 OEEC, Towards a New Energy Pattern in Europe, Paris, 1960Google Scholar (hereinafter referred to as Robinson Report).
7 Ibid., pp. 17, 18.
8 The energy products entering final consumption include both primary energy forms directly consumed without further significant transformation (e.g., coal in home or industrial furnaces; natural gas piped into a city distribution system; hydro-electricity in any use, with electricity consumed in an electricity plant itself defined in the OEEC energy-balance statistics as final consumption by the energy sector rather than as transformed energy), and secondary energy forms (coke; patent fuels; manufactured gas, including by-product gas from coking plants, blast furnace gas, and oil refinery tail gases; lignite briquettes; electricity produced in thermal plants). It is impossible to trace the course of primary energy sources through to final consumers without imputing consumption of secondary energy forms by specific users back to the primary energy sources of these secondary energy forms.
9 OEEC, Basic Statistics of Energy, 1950–1958, Paris, 1959, pp. 34, 37.Google Scholar
10 Ibid., with data in original units converted to metric tons hard coal equivalent (T HCE), using factors derived from OEEC, Robinson Report, p. 16.
11 OEEC, Robinson Report, p. 19.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., pp. 19, 59, 114.
13 Ibid., p. 41.
14 An incomplete set of estimates for 1954 may be derived from ECE, Economic Survey for Europe in 1955, Geneva, 1956, pp. 57–63Google Scholar; ECSC, Les investissements dans les industries du charbon et de l'acier de la Communauté, Luxembourg, September 1957, p. 15Google Scholar; Central Statistical Office, National Income and Expenditure, 1959, London, 1959: p. 54.Google Scholar
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French OT's and totals for oil: 1958, 1959—Bureau de Recherches de Pétrole/SNIP, Informations mensuelles (Paris), No. 4 (July 1959), p. 4Google Scholar; Conseil Economique et Social, Section de l'Energie, “Etude de la politique petrolière et des problèmes posés par les pétroles et les gaz sahariens,” Rapport présenté par M. René Richard, Paris, (August II, 1959) p. 22 (mimeographed) (hereinafter referred to as Rapport Richard).
16 ECE, The Coal Situation and Prospects in Europe in 1958/1959, Geneva, 1959, p. 2.Google Scholar
17 ECSC High Authority, “Premier rapport sur la portée et les effets des mesures prises dans le domaine de la politique énergétique,” Luxembourg, November 30, 1959, pp. 9, 10 (mimeographed).Google Scholar
18 Ibid., p. 5.
19 ECE, , The Coal Situation …, p. 9.Google Scholar
20 National Coal Board, Plan for Coal, London, October 1950, p. 33.Google Scholar
21 ECSC, Premier rapport sur une politique coordonnée dans le domaine de l'énergie (by Uri, Pierre), Luxembourg, April 1959, p. 43 and Annexe B.Google Scholar
22 Ibid., p. 49.
23 Ibid., pp. 47ff.
24 According to the coal experts of the ECE Secretariat.
25 National Coal Board, Revised Plan for Coal, London, October 1959.Google Scholar
26 Hincker, Michel, “L'énergie en Europe et en France (II),” Economie et politique (November-December 1959), p. 13.Google Scholar
27 OEEC, Robinson Report, p. 51.Google Scholar
28 If the prices of conventional fuels were to fall further, owing to competitive pressure from oil and gas, the relative cost advantage of conventional over nuclear power would be even greater.
29 “Slow Euratom Pace Is Held Temporary,” New York Times, November 5, 1959 (quoting Etienne Hirsch, President of Euratom); “Atom Power Lags in East and West,” ibid., November 8, 1959.
30 Oil and Gas Journal (October 19, 1959), p. 86.
31 CES, Rapport Richard, pp. 62–63.Google Scholar
32 Ibid., pp. 11, 13, 20, 22, 44; and Bureau de Recherches de Pétrole/SNIP, Informations mensuelles, No. 3 (June 1959), p. 1.Google Scholar
33 This was pointed out to me by Paul R. de Ryckere, of Caltex in Brussels.
34 Cf. Uri, , op.cit., p. 69.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., p. 43.
36 J. A. van den Heuvel, “Integrated Energy for Europe,” paper prepared for the Round Table Conference on European Problems, London, November 3 and 4, 1959, p. 32 (mimeographed).
37 CES, Rapport Richard, p. 20.Google Scholar
38 Even van den Heuvel argues that “the inflationary effect of an increase in coal prices has never been proved” (op.cit., p. 10).
39 This is particularly important under European conditions, where labor is often immobile because of lack of housing in areas of alternative employment and because of the sometimes violent opposition to change on the part of the coal miners.
40 There is a significant difference between Europe's dependence on overseas sources for foodstuffs and that for oil. The former come largely from the Western Hemisphere and the British Commonwealth; the latter comes largely from the unstable Middle East.