TABLE OF CONTENTS Western Europe is the world's second largest oil consuming region with a total demand in 1960 of about 166 million tons. Five of the world's ten largest consuming countries (excluding the United States and the Soviet Union) are in this area. These are the United Kingdom, with a consumption of almost 40 million tons; Western Germany and France, each using almost 30 million tons of oil; Italy with a demand of 20 million tons and Sweden which consumed over 11 million. Since 1950 consumption in Western Europe has been increasing very rapidly, with an average annual rate of increase of almost 14 per cent. The incremental demand each year has, indeed, for the last few years exceeded the additional amounts of oil sold in the United States. Even more remarkedly the additional 23 million tons of oil sold in Western Europe in 1960 was only about 5 million tons less than the additional quantities sold in the whole of the remainder of the non-communist world.
This growing significance of the Western European oil market has, of course, had an...
