Seven Sisters Oil Majors
The Seven Sisters appear in The secret meeting that launched OPEC as the major American and European oil companies that dominated late-1950s oil markets before OPEC became a meaningful producer-country force. The episode says these companies coordinated drilling rights and the prices they paid to countries such as [[SaudiArabia|Saudi Arabia]] and Venezuela.
Their role in the wiki is as the company-led precursor to state-led Oil Producer Supply Coordination. OPEC’s origin story is not presented as producer countries inventing cartel logic from nothing, but as oil states reacting to an existing company-centered system that could change terms without consulting host countries.
The Energy Trading Scale Advantage branch offers a later contrast: European majors in another source are powerful because of trading, logistics, and physical-market intelligence, while this source emphasizes an earlier period when company control over concessions and posted prices shaped producer-country frustration.
Connections
- OPEC - producer-state organization formed in response to the older oil-company power structure.
- Wanda Jablonski - oil journalist whose reporting helped explain how the companies operated.
- Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran - producing countries tied to the episode’s founding story.
- Oil Producer Supply Coordination - later state-side coordination mechanism.
- Energy Trading Scale Advantage - adjacent oil-major power concept from a later source.