A Song of Water and Fire: The Brief Coming of Age of the Venezuelan Oil Industry's R&D Programme at the Turn of the 20th Century

The geographical location of the world's largest oil reserves (South America, Middle East) , has rarely corresponded to the sources of the technical know-how required to monetize efficiently said reserves. The tension this had created in many of the major oil-producing countries was reflected in 1977 in the words of the Secretary General of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) , Ali Mohammed Jaidah: The development of an indigenous technological base, backed by domestic research institutions [is] . . . a central pivot in the process of industrialization . . . we have been buying technology at exorbitant prices, whilst turn-key projects have proved to be tied to the suppliers of technology for patents, spare parts, operations, research . . . the present terms of transfer of technology are a source of deep concern to us . . . because they are of a grudging nature. Even the owners of oil-related technology have changed over the last three decades. Up to the 1990s, eleven oil majors carried out 80 per cent of Research & Development (R&D), but by 2013 it was oil field services (OFS) companies, mainly based in the USA, that issued 80 per cent of all the patents related to upstream oil activities.