著者

上野 喬

出版者

社会経済史学会

雑誌

社会経済史学 (ISSN:00380113)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.37, no.5, pp.495-517,530-52, 1972

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In summing up the activities of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group in the thirties, we can point out their conservative characters on all fields. For instance the Gorup had taken a share of about 11 per cent in the world crude oil production constantly and had enjoyed a sound financial result in this hard decade. In this essay the author sketches a short economic and business history of the Group in terms of their cartel or cooperative movements in the thirties and wants to add a short supplement to the famous International Petroleum Cartel (1952). In the middle of the twenties the world economy had been growing year by year, but things changed gradually in the petroleum industry. Among many firms the Group was the quickest to see the writing on the wall, overproduction of crude oil, and to persuade cooperation to each other. By their effort the 'Achnacarry' or 'As is' Agreement of 1928, the spirit of the most comprehensive cartel agreement in this industry, was shown. The petroleum industry consists of crude oil production, reffining, transportation and marketing. As time went on the essence of the 'Achnacary' Agreement was spread over all these fields. Without this in their integrated fields, the international petroleum cartel could not attain their purpose.With this Agreement the Big Three-Standard - NJ, Anglo-Persian and the Group - tried to limit the competition in production (Middle East and Venezuela) and in marketing (Europe artd Asia). The depressing thirties were the time of development of petrochemical industry and the time of technocrats. In petrochemical field the Group was running the top, and in this field cartels or patents had played the most important roles. Moreover cartel movements were not limited in these firms, IG Farben, ICI and Du Pont also wanted to make international and inter-industry cooperations among one another. As for technocrats the Group owed much to them. By Kessler, Cohen, De Kok and Pijzel the Group succeeded to establish MEKOG in Holland and Shell Chemical in California. Last but not least, tanker transportation has been the most important means of carrying oil from producing to consuming countries, and the Group was the biggest tanker owner oil company at that time. But even for them it was essential to keep tanker freight rates as high as possible. In 1934, after the failure of the Tankskibscontralen of Norwegian, the International Tanker Owners Association was started, and it was entirely certain that if the Majors of oil companies had not entered in, this cartel, its success would have been doubtful. In this tanker pool the Kessler plan came into being at last.