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This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1973 oil crisis or 'shock.' The shock is mainly remembered for the Arab oil embargo imposed in the fall of 1973, but there were underlying structural problems within the oil industry that turned the embargo into a full-blown crisis. The inability of U.S. production to compensate for supply shortages, combined with the loss of the major oil companies' control over Middle East production and prices, created a shock that reshaped the international petroleum industry and world affairs in ways that still reverberate today. Tyler Priest (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Associate Professor of History and Geography, University of Iowa. He is a specialist in the history of oil and energy. He is the author of The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil's Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (Texas A&M Press: 2007) and is working on a new book titled, Deepwater Horizons: Managing Offshore Oil and Gas in the United States. In 2010-2011, he served as a senior policy analyst for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. More information about the foreign Relations Council can be found here.