Page 385 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

382 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

to adapt themselves to the irreversible changes that had taken place in the oil
market-place. In the course of the article Akins made a special point of

defending the State Department against the charge of passivity in the face of
the Libyan junta’s conduct in 1970, which, it will be recalled, had ushered in
the yahoo phase in the history of oil negotiations. The oil companies, according
to Akins, ‘had little choice’ but to yield to the threats made by the Libyans of a
shut-down in production if their demands for increased prices were not met.
‘The Libyans’, he explained, in words which have been quoted in the previous
chapter, ‘were competent men in a strong position; they played their hand
straight and found it a winning one.’ (‘Competent men’, it might be remarked

in passing, seems a peculiarly anodyne description to apply to a boorish
camarilla whose sordid implication in international terrorism was well known
by the spring of 1973.) Suggestions made at the time and afterwards, Akins
continued, for countering the Libyans’ threats by challenging them to
nationalize the oil companies’ assets outright, or by blocking Libyan funds in
European or American banks, were simply ‘unrealistic’.
The task of self-exoneration agreeably accomplished, Akins proceeded to
devote the major part of his article to a detailed description of current and
projected levels of oil consumption in the United States, Western Europe and

Japan, the distribution of oil reserves between the eastern and western hemi­
spheres, and present and future rates of output in the principal oil-producing
countries. The impression produced was that of the utter dependence of
Western Europe and Japan upon Middle-Eastern oil, and of the impotence of
the industrial countries in the face of OPEC’s resolution and might. Nothing
demonstrated this mor? in a 1 ■ , .
the conclusion of the Tehran US S View’ tban the relief displayed by Europeat
‘guaranteed’oil supphes for m February *971, which, he said,
the European consumers wa & yeJrS' Fbe underlying bargaining position of

went on, tossing a *7 ’ “d knew “ fu,i we"-’ However, he
industrial nations to be undiV ort.toh‘.s readers, there was no need for the
vided that they were prenared Y peSS1™lsnc about future supplies of oil, pro­
reason for alarm oveZthe no«’k -i™ I.he PnCeS 3Sked for iL Sti,J less was there
rather than financial reasons that supPUes would becutoffforpolitical
affirmed ‘that rhe A mk u >> ^ing ^aisal [has] said repeatedly’, Akins
be used as a political weapon” Saf°fi himseIf wouJd not’aJlow oil t0
and the same time th~ 1? 1 i aUshed that he had amply demonstrated, at one

iron ToLdaZ o” OPEC an^hSneSS °f EurOpe and Japan
governments of rh^ °Wn stauncb ^th in the moderation of the
ton rhe follow’ ^-Eastern oil states, Akins departed from Washing-
Arahia Do l°take Up tbe post American ambassador to Saudi

Arabia^ Doubtless Jiddah was dressed over-all for his arrival.
Hard on the heels of Akins’s article, the next issue of Foreign Affairs in July

1973 a further disquisition on the subject of OPEC and the West
entit e e oil story: facts, fiction and fair play’. Its author was Jahangir