The Economy of Iraq (1950-2010)
Abbas Alnasrawi
Greenwood Press
One of the most striking features of the world oil map is the concentration of crude oil reserves in a few countries. In the Western Hemisphere, most of the oil reserves are concentrated in the United States, Venezuela, Mexico, and Canada. In the Eastern Hemisphere, they are concentrated in the former Soviet Union, North Africa, and the Middle East. Because of the stage of their economic development, the United States and the former Soviet Union developed their oil industries primarily to meet their countries’ own demands for energy. But since other oil-producing countries have a very low indigenous demand for energy, their oil resources were developed to meet world demand for oil-mainly that of the industrialized countries of Western Europe, Japan, and later on the United States.
Foreign capital and technology had to be called upon ... | 
