This third, revised, and enlarged edition of Benjamin Shwadran"s highly acclaimed study of Middle East oil now brings the story up to date by linking it to the energy crisis of the 1970s. Written in an absorbing narrative style tracing the course of the negotiations, maneuvers, and conflicts which have marked relations between the oil companies, the producing countries, and the Great Powers during the past seventy years, the book examines the impact of oil on the Middle East as well as its strategic and political role in the international arena and prospects for the future. Capping his penetrating analysis of the forces at play in the Middle East oil story, Shwadran presents the alternatives facing the Western consuming countries and discusses the possibility of reducing international tensions through a radical solution to the oil problem.