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 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.