Editing Suez Crisis (section)

==== Oil shipments ====
The canal continued to be strategically important after the Second World War for oil shipment.<ref name="Varble, Derek, p. 12">{{Harvnb|Varble|2003|p=12}}</ref> Petroleum historian [[Daniel Yergin]] wrote: "In 1948, the canal abruptly lost its traditional rationale. ... [British] control over the canal could no longer be preserved on grounds that it was critical to the defence either of India or of an empire that was being liquidated. And yet, at exactly the same moment, the canal was gaining a new role—as the highway not of empire, but of oil. ... By 1955, petroleum accounted for half of the canal's traffic, and, in turn, two thirds of Europe's oil passed through it".<ref>{{Harvnb|Yergin|1991|p=480}}</ref>

Western Europe then imported two million barrels per day from the Middle East, 1,200,000 by tanker through the canal, and another 800,000 via pipeline from the Persian Gulf ([[Trans-Arabian Pipeline]]) and Kirkuk ([[Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline]]) to the Mediterranean<!-- which was also cut -->, where tankers received it. The US imported another 300,000 barrels daily from the Middle East.<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824597,00.html State of Business: Middle-East Echoes] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805063536/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824597,00.html |date=5 August 2011}}, ''Time'', 12 November 1956</ref> Though pipelines linked the oil fields of the [[Kingdom of Iraq]] and the [[Arab states of the Persian Gulf|Persian Gulf states]] to the Mediterranean, these routes were prone to suffer from instability, which led British leaders to prefer to use the sea route through the canal.<ref name="Varble, Derek, p. 12"/> The rise of [[Oil tanker|super-tankers]] for shipping Middle East oil to Europe, which were too big to use the canal, meant British policymakers greatly overestimated the importance of the canal.<ref name="Varble, Derek, p. 12"/> By 2000, only 8% of the imported oil in Britain arrived via the Suez Canal with the rest coming via the Cape route.<ref name="Varble, Derek, p. 12"/>

In August 1956 the [[Royal Institute of International Affairs]] published a report "Britain and the Suez Canal" revealing government perception of the Suez area. It reiterated the strategic necessity of the canal to the UK, including the need to meet military obligations under the [[Manila Pact]] in the Far East and the [[Baghdad Pact]] in Iraq, Iran, or Pakistan. The report noted the canal had been used in wartime to transport materiel and personnel from and to the UK's close allies in Australia and New Zealand, and might be vital for such purposes in future. The report cites the amount of material and oil that passes through the canal to the UK, and the economic consequences of the canal being put out of commission, concluding:
{{Blockquote|The possibility of the Canal being closed to troopships makes the question of the control and regime of the Canal as important to Britain today as it ever was.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Donald |last=Watt |title=Britain and the Suez Canal |publisher=Royal Institute of International Affairs |date=1956 |page=8}}</ref>}}