72 SOCIAL SCIENTIST is not dependent on oil in India. The new situation in the oil industry has also brought India and the oil producing countries of East Asia closer to each other. Even in the sixties India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) entered into agreements for jointly undertaking oil exploration in Iranian offshore with the Iranian National Oil Company,, and the latter also collaborated in constructing a refinery and guaranteeing long-term supply of crude in Madras. The recent agreements with Iran goes a stage further and arranges Iranian support for iron-ore production in India, in addition to providing ^soft loans' for crude-oil purchase by India. To what extent India in future succeeds in strengthening direct relations with the oil exporting countries is largely a matter of politics and diplomacy. But a reorientation of domestic energy policy in line with the recommendation of the Energy Survey of 1965 to encourage the development of those forms of energy which the ^economy is best able to provide" is within the reach of the Indian planners. This paper is largeply based on the following articles by the author which contain detailed references on various issues covered here: 1 "Large International Firms in the Oil Industry", IDS Bulletin, (special issue on "Oil and Development"), October 1974. 2 "The Changing Role of the Major International Oil Firms", in Carl Widstrand (ed.). Multinationals in Africa, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala 1975. 8 "Oil Prices, OPEC, and the Poor Oil Consuming Countries", in Paul Rogers (ed.), Future Resources and World Development, Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York 1976. ^4 "Soviet Oil and the Third World", in World Development, vol 3, no 5, May 1975. s "Oil Crisis and the Third World", in Vishleshan, March 1975. 6 "The Political Economy of the Major Oil Producing Countries: Some Generalizations", paper contributed to a colloquium on Oil and Development, at IDS, Sussex, 28 May 1876. 7 Oil Industry in India — Some Economic Aspects, Frank Cass, London 1971.