Page 452 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The ‘Sting? 449

raised their prices by the full io per cent to bring themselves into line with the
rest of OPEC.
However captious and overweening Yamani may be - and he is by no means
as captious and overweening as some of his ministerial colleagues in OPEC-he

is by virtue of what others, and particularly ARAMCO and its parent com­
panies, have made him. In evidence before the sub-committee on multina­
tional corporations of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 1974, a
former chairman of Standard Oil of California, Otto Miller, gave this reply

when the chairman of the sub-committee asked whether, if the political
situation in the Middle East became inflamed, the Arabs might not again cut
off oil supplies to the industrial nations, regardless of the consequences to
themselves: ‘They would do almost anything. ... You are completely at their

mercy and that is why I have always felt that it is
friendly relationships with those countries..■ ■ comDanies who testified

SSSSSSSSfeS

and unpredictable. The only way to handle them so the f
ago concluded, was as one would treat fractious children by mdulgmg the r

whims, feeding their vanity and abstaining from P^ .h'Jbv the tactics
other and more beneficial ways of treating fractious children ^y the tacucs
which the companies have employed (and which have been g yP
for bringing them to their present unhappy and precarious situation ««
the governments in question) is a possibility which t e comp Therecordof

to have contemplated only for as long as it took them to reJe^y ' executions
their negotiations with OPEC since 1970, with a few short-lived p
only reinforces this conclusion. . niqrP ;n
Saudi Arabia, as indicated a page or two earlier, occupies a „ jn

the counter-strategy which the Western powers, an t e ni• sand
particular, have adopted in an endeavour to ensure stabi ity ° 01
prices. The key element is the size of the Saudi Arabian 01 reset ,
extent to which production from them can be raised, bot to

requirements of the industrial countries and to frustrate any moves
of OPEC to raise prices. The success of the counter-strategy (t e im . •
tion of which is closely bound up with the Saudi-American speci re
ship’) depends to a considerable extent upon the correct answers •
that is, from the standpoint of the West - being given to a number of quesuo ~

Does Saudi Arabia actually possess, or will she possess in t e 1
future, the requisite spare producing capacity? Is she willing to ac
supplier’ in the Western interest, boosting her production, re ’

Prevent the rest of OPEC from threatening a cut-back or even a shut-
means of forcing up the price of oil? Conversely, will she act as