The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

In all the agitated discussion in 1956 about the Suez Canal as the jugular, one point had not been given much attention: If the canal and the Middle Eastern pipelines were vulnerable, there was a safer alternative—the route around the Cape of Good Hope. To be economical and practical, however, supplying Western Europe by that route would require much larger tankers, capable of carrying a great deal more oil. The general view in the industry, however, was that, physically, such tankers could not be constructed. But Japanese shipyards, taking advantage of advances in diesel engines and better steels, were soon proving otherwise. “In 1956, the tanker people were saying larger ships would be too expensive, their fuel costs too high,” recalled John Loudon, senior managing director of Shell. “The amazing thing to me was how quickly these tankers were being manufactured by the Japanese.” Not only would they prove to be eminently economical, they would also provide the requisite security. Thus, supertankers, along with the decline of British influence and prestige and the ascendancy of Gamal Abdel Nasser, were among the consequences of the Suez Crisis. As one British official put it, “Tankers clearly were less subject to political risk.”