Page 404 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The ‘Suns’ 401

contrivance as spontaneity in its composition, and also that it was designed to
secure numerous ends and achieve multiple satisfactions, it becomes clear that
the Saudis simply seized the chance to deal a blow at a regime which was
ideologically repugnant to them. (It is possible, of course, that they were also
influenced in their decision by the fact that - strange though it may seem - the

Marxist government of South Yemen was continuing to allow the refinery at
Aden to supply fuel to the American forces in Vietnam.)
For the implementation of the embargo and its associated restrictive
measures the Saudi government relied wholly upon ARAMCO. The company
was not only required to allocate oil in specified quantities to countries exemp­
ted from the embargo and others, like West Germany, Italy and Japan, to

which limited amounts of oil were being supplied on sufferance; but it was also
instructed to ascertain from its off-takers of crude what amounts of refined
products they were supplying to the United States armed forces from their
refineries outside the United States, e.g. in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
ARAMCO was then obliged to subtract from the allocations of crude to the
countries in which these refineries were located an amount equivalent to the
aggregate amount of refined products supplied from these countries to the
United States armed forces; and to make a further reduction in its production

of crude from the Saudi fields by the same amount. The intention behind this
purely vindictive measure was to prevent ARAMCO’s parent companies from
continuing to supply the United States forces overseas, and in particular the
Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.
ARAMCO faithfully carried out the Saudis’ instructions, never question­
ing, it would seem, either the propriety of such co-operation or the Saudis’ right

to require it. ARAMCO’s prime concern appeared to be with its own fortunes,
with the safety of its concession and with the preservation of its special
relationship with the Saudi ruling house. It was also, to some extent, secretly
relieved by the imposition of the cuts in production. For although in Sep­
tember it had set itself output targets of approximately 8.76 million b/d for
October and 9.1 million b/d for November 1973, it was encountering, as
indicated earlier, more and more technical difficulties in reaching and main­

taining higher levels of production from its fields. As one of its senior engineers
candidly confessed some months afterwards, ARAMCO was ‘taken off the
hook by the embargo: without it, the company would have had to cut back
production or risk doing permanent damage to the fields. What this admission
leaves unanswered, however, is why ARAMCO allowed itself to be impaled on
the hook in the first place; that is to say, why it strove so mightily to raise its

production from 6.5 million b/d in February 1973 to 8.3 million b/d in
eptember, an increase so spectacular as to raise fears, well before September,
t at the fields were in danger of being damaged. It certainly suited the Saudi
government s book for production to reach a peak in September; for it was
upon the September production figure that the subsequent cuts were to be