Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela founded Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to coordinate production quotas and negotiate collectively with Western oil companies. OPEC asserted producer nations' right to determine resource pricing against decades of concessionary arrangements favoring multinational corporations. This cartel formation marked beginning of Global South economic assertiveness challenging neocolonial extraction patterns.

Arab poets like Adonis and Nizar Qabbani incorporated petroleum wealth and petro-modernity themes into verses exploring tension between traditional heritage and sudden affluence. Nigerian Civil War literature engaged oil politics as Biafran secession was partly motivated by control over eastern oilfields. Petro-nationalism generated poetic discourses questioning whether resource wealth liberated or corrupted postcolonial societies.