






That August night, the three men decided to stop fighting and to start sharing out the world's oil. Their vision was that production zones, transport costs, sales prices - everything would be agreed and shared. And so began a great cartel, whose purpose was to dominate the world, by controlling its oil.

Four others soon joined them, and they came to be known as the Seven Sisters - the biggest oil companies in the world.




- Xavier Houzel, an oil trader


Throughout the region's modern history, since the discovery of oil, the Seven Sisters have sought to control the balance of power.




At the end of the 1960s, the Seven Sisters, the major oil companies, controlled 85 percent of the world's oil reserves. Today, they control just 10 percent.



- Gerard Prunier, a historian




The country's four refineries are obsolete and the continent's main oil exporter is forced to import refined petrol - a paradox that reaps fortunes for a handful of oil companies.

Encouraged by the companies, corruption has become a system of government - some $50bn are estimated to have 'disappeared' out of the $350bn received since independence.

But new players have now joined the great oil game.

China, with its growing appetite for energy, has found new friends in Sudan, and the Chinese builders have moved in. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir is proud of his co-operation with China - a dam on the Nile, roads, and stadiums.

In order to export 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields in the South - China financed and built the Heglig pipeline connected to Port Sudan - now South Sudan's precious oil is shipped through North Sudan to Chinese ports.





for all the major companies.










Peak oil – the point in time at which the highest rate of oil extraction has been reached, and after which world production will start decline. Many geologists and the International Energy Agency say the world's crude oil output reached its peak in 2006.





These are the new Seven Sisters:

Saudi Arabia's Saudi Aramco, the largest and most sophisticated oil company in the world; Russia's Gazprom, a company that Russia's President Vladimir Putin wrested away from the oligarchs; The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which, along with its subsidiary, Petrochina, is the world's secnd largest company in terms of market value; The National Iranian Oil Company, which has a monopoly on exploration, extraction, transportation and exportation of crude oil in Iran – OPEC's second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; Venezuela's PDVSA, a company the late president Hugo Chavez dismantled and rebuilt into his country's economic engine and part of his diplomatic arsenal; Brazil's Petrobras, a leader in deep water oil production, that pumps out 2 million barrels of crude oil a day; and Malaysia's Petronas - Asia's most profitable company in 2012.

Mainly state-owned, the new Seven Sisters control a third of the world's oil and gas production, and more than a third of the world's reserves. The old Seven Sisters, by comparison, produce a tenth of the world's oil, and control only three percent of the reserves.

The balance has shifted.

Source: Al Jazeera