The Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies opened its monthly lecture program for the academic year 2024/2025 with a lecture by Bahraini academic Omar AlShehabi. After being introduced by researcher Abdulrahman Al-Baker, the University of Leeds Professor presented “Oil and Development in Abdelrahman Munif’s Thought”, on Tuesday, 3 September 2024.

AlShehabi began by highlighting his interest in the writings of the Saudi writer and author Abdelrahman Munif as part of a book project on political economy in the Gulf, which explores the relevant works of those from the region. The lecturer discussed Munif’s writings on the political economy of oil, especially in the journal, Oil and Development, first published in Baghdad in 1975. It was the most widely circulated Arab journal in the field of oil economics, with national, Arab, and international leanings. Prominent names in the field wrote in it periodically, such as Samir Amin, Jawad Hashem, Abdullah Al-Tariqi, and Hazem Al-Beblawi, figures with long backgrounds in economics. Munif was Editor of the journal from its inception until his departure from Iraq in 1971.

He noted that Munif’s writings in this field are often neglected and remain unknown to readers, despite the fact that he obtained a doctorate in oil economics in 1961 and continued to write in this field over the next two decades. AlShehabi focused on Munif’s methodology and his way of categorizing the emergence of oil in International Relations, and suggested organizing this emergence into three eras, which he derived from Munif’s writings, focused on the idea of crises. This is a type of conjunctural analysis, in AlShahabi’s view, that allowed Munif to identify many of the known and prevailing narratives about oil, as follows:

1. The era of oil concessions: Munif identified the beginning of this era as stretching from before World War I until the beginning of the 1950s. AlShehabi noted that Munif had sought to understand the social relations that shaped oil geopolitics, believing that oil was at that time a curse due to its exploitation. Two factors played a role in that, namely capitalism and colonialism, which shaped Arab and international oil relations at that time. At this stage, Munif found that capitalism had developed and entered the international sphere, and that commercial interests pushed oil companies to expand globally. These imperial ambitions were embodied in oil corporations, with relations between major oil companies and the oil producing countries of the region organized during this time.
2. The era of profit-sharing to combat nationalization: According to Munif, the pivotal shift toward this era was ushered in by Iran’s nationalization of the oil company in 1952 and the subsequent overthrow of elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. During this period, oil concessions in their old form were no longer suitable for the West, which needed to produce a new form of concessions, overturning the legal framework that had prevailed until that moment. Nationalization did not succeed due to a lack of some crucial factors, such as cooperation between countries. The principle of profit-sharing was pushed, which became the norm in the Middle East for the next twenty years. This emergence was not driven by technology and progress, but by the formation of political relationships. In Munif’s opinion, oil as a commodity acquired a political form, and three factors contributed to this: a. Structural changes in the international economy and the beginning of America’s transformation into an oil-importing country; b. The change in the formation of global oil relations during the sixties, as national movements and liberation movements grew stronger, and colonialism was no longer able to defeat them; and c. The establishment of national partnerships that participated in and contributed to oil production, such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
3. The era of nationalization, the oil embargo, and the imperialist response: Munif chose 1972 as the year of transformation in this era, a transformation sparked by the government of Muammar Gaddafi when it imposed pricing and taxes on oil companies unilaterally. In the same year, other countries took the step of nationalizing oil, such as Algeria, which shook the legitimacy of the oil industry that had prevailed for a long time. The war of 1973 showed that the “method” of using oil was the problem, as the world entered a pivotal phase paving the way for a new system that changed the political and economic features, and woke capitalists up abruptly to the reality that the industrial countries did not own the world. Rather a vision of a new world order led by the Third World countries was in conflict with a US led world order. For Munif, the solution to the competing relations during this period was to liberate the Arab world and oil, and to establish a new international economic system. The dangers that loomed at the time were related to currency and its links to the dollar, and the growing arms trade in the region. Thus, for Munif, the 1970s represented the decade that reorganized US relations with the Middle East and global relations in general.

AlShehabi concluded his lecture by saying that throughout the period in which the journal was published, Munif emphasized importance of the 1970s as a turning point in the world order. He always stressed the importance of addressing this unequal order and the need for a new international economic order based on equality. As the 1970s drew to a close, Munif’s writings took on a more pessimistic tone; with the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war began, divisions reached their peak, and any possibility of a new order vanished. Thus, 1981 was Munif’s last issue as editor of the journal, after which he left Iraq, where he had settled for a long time, for Paris.