Volume II of the History of the International Energy Agency takes up the energy policies and actions of the Agency during its first twenty years, from 1974 to 1994 inclusive. While the weak institutional situation of the industrial countries in the 1973-1974 crisis period made it all but impossible for them to adopt decisive and effective responses, when the time for action came, the reasons for their vulnerability to the oil producer countries were perhaps less their underdeveloped institutions than their essentially optimistic and passive oil management policies during the years preceding the crisis. Other policy choices which might have prevented or softened the crisis were available to them, as Volume II shows.