Transformation through fragmentation: (Dis)engagement with alternative energy projects within a fracturing oil industry

The oil industry is by no means a monolithic entity. This article argues that the fragmented nature of the oil industry played a key role in oil companies' decisions regarding their (often viewed as 'failed') diversification strategies into nuclear and solar energy during the long 1970s. By employing a long-term approach to oil industry involvement in these energy sources, the article shows how access (or lack thereof) to cheap-to-produce sources of oil in the 1950s and 1960s was crucial to firms' strategies in the face of rapid developments in the nuclear market. Only when access to cheap oil production seemed to become increasingly difficult did the major oil companies also seriously join alternatives such as nuclear and solar on a larger-scale. This changed in the mid-1980s when most of the major oil firms divested their alternative energy projects amidst a take-over battle that fractured the oil industry even more.