Governments were torn between two fundamental objectives: obtaining relatively low-priced oil and guaranteeing secure supplies at any price. Once they had been able to do both. But now they found that these two objectives were contradictory. Governments talked the first but, when domestic pressures began to be felt, pursued the second. The top priority was to keep domestic consumers, who happened to be voters, supplied. Energy questions had become, explained a European energy minister, “short, short, short-run politics.” The various Western governments became promoters and champions of
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