Word: yamani
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last week Yamani's legendary power came to an end. In a royal decree, Saudi Arabia's King Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz dismissed Yamani, 56, as his Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister, a post he had held since 1962. Planning Minister Hisham Nazer, a longtime Yamani rival, was named to take his place until a permanent new oil minister is named. Nazer's first official act was to call for an emergency meeting of the pricing committee of OPEC, whose 13 members include Nigeria, Venezuela and Indonesia, as well as seven Arab countries. The avowed purpose of the meeting, which...
...news of Yamani's ouster, spreading instantly through government offices, trading floors and boardrooms around the world, set off a kind of mini-panic. Markets careened as speculators struggled to grasp what the departure meant. Spot oil prices first dropped more than a $1.10 per bbl. in New York City and then climbed nearly $2 to about $15.25 by week's end. Prices seesawed in London and Rotterdam. In Washington, a bewildered Reagan Administration official said the firing "caught us all by surprise...
...ousted minister had apparently run afoul of the ruling House of Saud on several counts. By electing to pump Saudi oil as fast as he could at a time when there was already a plentiful world supply, Yamani sparked a price war that caused OPEC prices to plunge from some $30 per bbl. last December to less than $10 this spring. Yamani's goal was to flood the world with cheap oil and thereby drive high-cost producers in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere out of business. OPEC would then be free to raise prices once again...
Experts say Yamani clung to his strategy despite growing opposition from King Fahd, who has called for a price of at least $18 per bbl. to boost Saudi oil earnings. Yamani countered that producers could control either prices or output, but not both at once. During OPEC's 17-day meeting in Geneva last month, Fahd repeatedly intervened from Riyadh on several key issues. The Geneva session wound up endorsing price-raising production limits, which Yamani initially opposed, through...
...Saudis privately support Iraq in the conflict, they fear Iran's military might as well as its influence over potentially seditious Islamic fundamentalists. Iran warned in July that military reprisals might be directed at Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and any other country that gave Iraq money to buy arms. Yamani's dismissal ended a remarkable career. The son of a religious judge in Mecca, Islam's holiest city, Yamani graduated from Cairo University and in 1956 received a degree from Harvard Law School. In 1958 he became a government legal adviser and protege of Crown Prince (later King) Faisal, who named...