This thesis analyses the development of oil and natural gas in
the Soviet Union and Eastern European full members of the Council
for Futual Economic Assistance (Comecon) from the end of the
Second World War to 1975 and assesses the likely role of hydrocarbon
fuels in the Comecon energy balance to 1980. The major
part of the thesis is concerned with developments in the 1971-
1975 period, when the Soviet Union, the bloc's principal producer
and supplier, experienced a number of technical and economic
difficulties in the oil and gas industries and when world prices
of oil showed a fivefold increase, which was reflected in turn
in increasing prices of other energy raw materials. The objectives
of the study are therefore to identify the problems faced in
utilising Comecon oil and gas resources, to assess their impact on
energy developments in the bloc and on the pattern of Soviet trade
in oil and gas, and on relations with other hydrocarbon producers
in the changing world market.
There exists a number of western studies of Comecon energy developments,
published in the early to mid-sixties, some of which
suggested that the era of Comecon energy autarchy would come to
an end and that the group might become increasingly involved in
the world market as a competitive purchaser. This view was maintained in some quarters after the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed substantial increases in the
selling prices of their crude oil in October 1973 and subsequently.
However study of Soviet and Fast European techno-economic material
has revealed that before the aforementioned price rises Comecon
planners were assessing the possibilities of adjusting energy
policy to cope with these difficulties, with the objectives of at
least maintaining the export surplus of oil and of developing
export trade in gas. Such theories of an impending "Comecon energy
crisis" are re-examined, taking into account the capacity of the
logistic system to allow planners to re-assess the relationship
of oil to coal, gas and other fuels. The examination suggests
that although considerable difficulties are known and acknowledged
to exist in the Comecon oil and gas industries, the bloc has the
opportunity of retaining self-sufficiency in hydrocarbon energy
to 1980 and that current policy is directed to the attainment of
this objective.
The thesis is written almost entirely from Soviet and Post European
technical and economic sources. Official Comecon statistical
material, supplemented by Ii~ECt OBeD and United Nations publications,
have been used to provide basic data. The metric system has been
adopted throughout the thesis
