During and after the Suez affair in 1956, as an economic journalist, I became interested in the international oil business, and in 1962 I wrote a book about oil companies and governments. In the late 1980s, Richard Eden asked me to do the same again for Cambridge Studies in Energy and the Environment. This book is the result. The first one looked at ‘the kaleidoscopic international circumstances of an industry in course of change’. Those circumstances have been transformed, though not out of recognition. They remain no less kaleidoscopic.

In the thirty years between, moving out of journalism, I have had reason to study the business more closely, as a consultant on many facets of oil companies’ relations with governments of all kinds, advising one side or the other. That career drew me more deeply into some of the relationships involved. But one's role as a consultant continued to be outside the oil industry looking in, as distinct from the practical experience within it of company and government oilmen, many of whom became friends. So my judgement of this business has remained detached, for whatever that is worth.

Rather to my surprise, initially, closer contact with the industry did not bring me much more ‘inside’ information than a journalist could readily obtain; simply, more time to watch what went on. (This is a business remarkably well served by an expert daily and periodical press, upon which everyone in it depends.) The occasional confidences of clients remain outside the scope of this book. But those too, I hope, contributed to such understanding as I gained of what we all saw.