Word: yamani
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...members* voted to raise prices another 10.4% on Jan. 1 and yet a further 5% next July 1. But the Saudis, backed by the United Arab Emirates, announced that they would post only a 5% increase for the whole year. Moreover, Saudi Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani declared that Saudi Arabia would lift its self-imposed production limit of 8.5 million bbl. a day and pump out as much oil as the world market would take (the country can now produce 11.8 million bbl. daily). That was a clear attempt to undermine the higher prices decreed by its OPEC partners...
Politically, the implications are also great. Yamani's move is something of a victory for U.S. economic diplomacy. TIME learned that President Ford called Saudi Ambassador Ali Abdallah Alireza to the White House for a private talk. Cyrus Vance, who is Jimmy Carter's choice to be Secretary of State, met separately with the ambassador, and after the split in Qatar, Vance praised the Saudis' "courageous and statesmanlike" action. Yamani, for his part, declared, "We expect the West, especially the United States, to show appreciation for what we have done." The U.S., he said, could indicate gratitude...
...price down. As OPEC's volume producers, moreover, the Saudis have developed a more sophisticated understanding of customer markets than other OPEC members. In addition, the Saudis want to improve their image in the eyes of the West and to protect the huge investments they have made there. Yamani fruitlessly warned his fellow oil ministers that the slowdown in Western economies made oil-burning nations simply unable to take a big OPEC price increase. "We live in a small world," he explained later. "If the rest of it suffers economically, we also suffer, no matter how high we raise...
Star of Riyadh. Despite the strains, OPEC had so successfully fostered a one-for-all front that as the Qatar conference began last week, no one could have foreseen its drastic outcome. Bedecked in flowing Saudi robes and headdress, Yamani, who has a Kissinger-style flair for personal diplomacy, arrived at the very last minute. As he entered the plush Gulf Hotel in the Qatar capital of Doha, which had been completely taken over for the conference and placed under heavy security, Yamani gave a swift aside to reporters: "We are for a six-month [price] freeze...
Behind the closed steel shutters in the Gulfs giant banquet hall, which served as conference room, almost no one really took him seriously. "We listened respectfully to Yamani's proposals though we did not accept them," said one oil minister. When the other OPEC chieftains failed to buy his reasoning, Yamani dramatically rose from the conference table and strode out of the hall. He flew to Riyadh for talks with King Khalid ibn Abdul Aziz. The other oil ministers pretended to be unimpressed by Yamani's theatrics. Said Iraq's oil minister, Karim...