The Independents Strike Back: The Energy Crisis of the 1970s and the Forging of a New Chapter in the Environmental History of the Oil Industry

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the U.S. oil industry and environmentalism in the 1970s. In doing so it pays particular attention to the independent oil industry in the U.S. and how this segment of the industry interpreted growing environmental concerns within a larger context provided by an ever-expanding federal government. Ultimately, it was the independents and not the majors that established the industry’s response to environmentalism over the past half century.