Page 339 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

336 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

of the majors’ production for an indeterminate period. On the other hand
however, by submitting to the Libyan junta’s extortion, the majors were laying
up more serious trouble for the future. Already the junta had made it clear that
it would tolerate no restraints upon its behaviour. It had walked roughshod
over the arbitration provisions in the concessionary agreements, declaring
them null and void, and had then gone on to abrogate the agreements them­
selves. As a justification for its conduct it had put forward a meretricious
argument concocted from assorted bits and pieces taken from the recognized
doctrine of state sovereignty in international law, the unrecognized and highly
dubious propositions about ‘changing circumstances’ advanced in OPEC’s
resolution XVI-90 of June 1968, and a number of sweeping accusations of
corruption (especially over oil prices and revenues) against the former mon­
archical regime. What was perhaps of greater moment than this legalistic
sleight-of-hand was the fact that the Libyans were closely co-ordinating their

actions with those of the Algerian government in its negotiations with the
French oil companies. Indeed, the Libyan RCC’s tactics were almost a carbon
copy of the Algerians’, down to the throwing of tantrums, hurling of insults
and snarling of threats which were a feature of the Libyans’ conduct at nearly
every negotiating session with the companies. The conclusion was inescapable
that, if the Libyans were permitted to go on playing the yahoo as they wished,
and to treat the concessionary agreements as so much waste paper, then not
only would the whole Western oil industry in the Middle East be placed in
jeopardy but respect for international law everywhere was bound to be
seriously diminished.
Obvious though this conclusion might be, it was equally obvious (and had

been almost from the outset of the Libyan offensive) that the Western
governments most concerned were not going to offer the Libyans any resis­
tance worthy of the name. Although American companies had the lion’s share
of Libya’s oil, the United States government displayed a curious reluctance to
support them against the junta. Its attitude was conditioned in part by its
anxiety to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Algerians next door, and to
obtain an assured supply of Algerian natural gas. For this reason, therefore, the
United States government had sought to appease the Algerian government by
muting its protests over the expropriation of Phillips’s and Atlantic Richfield s
assets in Algeria. The new Conservative government in Britain, for all its
resounding election pronouncements, was no more prepared than its predeces­
sor had been to protect British interests in the Middle East - or anywhere else,

for that matter. . ,
The attitude of the United States government, or at least of the otnci
charged with responsibility in the matter, was made clear at a meeting con­
vened at the State Department on 25 September 1970, while Qaddafi sp«w
against the oil companies was at its height. Nearly all the major and in1 ep
dent companies operating in Libya were represented at the meeting, wh